Why Gestapo Victims Need Your Help

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W o r k e r s O f T h e W o r l d . U n i te !

PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE INTERESTS OF THE W ORKING PEOPLEVOL. X _ No. 47 NEW YORK, N. Y.. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1946 PRICE: FIVE CENTS

Stalinist Party Polls Biggest Vote In FranceExtreme Reaction Gains From CP-SP Policy O f Coalition W ith Capitalists, Returns Show

By John G. WrightAs a result of the Nov. 10 elections in France the Com­

munist Party (Stalinists) has emerged as the strongest single party, polling almost 5'A million votes and gaining 15 seats in the Assembly. The Socialist Party, at whose expense the Stalinists made their gains, went into a ta il- spin, losing 27 Assembly seats. The depth of the crisis convulsing the SP is indicated

TRUMAN AGREES TO SERVE AS GOP JUNIOR PARTNER

W a ll S tree t’s Decoy

by the fact that since last year’s October elections this party has lost 725,000 votes. I t will con­tinue to be torn apart.

The MRP, the capitalist cen­ter party, likewise made gains at the expense of the SP. But de­spite this, the MRP dropped from its position as the leading party and was barely able to hold its own so far as representation in the Assembly is concerned.LOSES TO R IG H T

In its popular vote the MRP lost about half a million votes. I t lost them to the extreme Right wing. We have here the famil­iar political phenomenon of the middle-of-the-road parties be­ing ground to pieces as the pro­cess of class polarization takes place in the course of a social crisis.

While the successes of the Stalinists appear quite spectacu­lar, significant gains were scored by the concentration of naked capitalist reaction—the Repub­lican Party of Liberty (PRL) in alliance with the Gaullist Un­ion. Their popular vote, repre­senting a gain of about 800,000, rose well above the three mil­lion mark, matching the popu­lar vote of the Socialists. In the Assembly they gained 17 seats.

At first glance the electoral successes of the Stalinists ap­pear to represent a definite left­ward shift in Prance. But this is only partially true. I t applies to that section of the workers who previously supported the Socialists and who have now turned to the Stalinists under the false impression that the lat­ter are more radical. But this does not apply to the country as a whole. The marked trend here has beep toward reinforce­ment of reaction.

Even a cursory analysis of the

Higher Vote For French Trotskyists

The French Trotskyists received 59,824 votes in the Nov. 10 elections, ac­cording to the Daily Work­er of Nov. 12.

This figure represents a gain of 33 per cent over the vote received by the Trotskyists in the previous French elections, held last June.

developments in the course of the last 12 months will make this amply clear. The sharpest leftward swing thus far in Prance was recorded in October 1945 when the combined vote for the CP and the SP amount­ed to 9Vi million, giving these two parties a total of 299 seats in the Assembly, or a working majority.

The masses voted for the working class parties because they wanted socialism. But the cowardly leaders of these parties worked instead to block the so­cialist path of development and to preserve the rule of the bank­rupt French capitalists.FRUIT OF TREACHERY

The fruits of this treacherous policy become obvious when we take into consideration, on the one hand, what has been hap­pening to the combined vote of the CP and the SP; and on the other, the growing power of the extreme Right.

By November 1946 the com­bined CP-SP vote dropped from its peak of 9V2 million to a to­tal of 8 Vi million. This is a drop of one million since October 1945. Their combined working majority of 299 in the Assembly has dropped to about 256 for both the SP and CP, a loss of

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Millions Of Unionists Issue Wage Demands

Another big boost in the cost of living following Tru­man’s decontrol order is expected to give impetus to the growing nation-wide campaign' for wage increases.

Already unions representing-several million workers have raised new wage demands and negotiations are' in progress in a number of key industries. These are the vanguard of unions with memberships totalling more than eight million whose contracts provide for reopening of wage clauses on 30 to 60 days' notice.

The first big union to initiate new negotiations was the CIO United Packinghouse Workers. Its demands have set a progres­sive pattern for other unions to follow. In addition to seeking hourly wage-rate Increases of from 12 to 22 cents, a $l-an-hour mirfimum wage arid a guaran­teed annual wage, the UPWA has called for a periodic, adjust­able cost-of-living bonus to com­pensate for additional rises in living costs after the contract is signed.UAW WATCHED

Close attention is being paid both 'by employers and workers to the developing wage drive of the CIO United Automobile Workers. Traditionally in the past decade, the auto workers have spearheaded the fight for higher wages, climaxed by the magnificent General Motors strike that set the pattern for wage increases last spring.

The UAW International Board several weeks ago opened a cam­paign for “substantial wage in­creases.” The UAW is currently negotiating with Chrysler Cor­poration, one of the automobile industry’s “Big Three.” No speci­fic wage demands have been an­nounced, but it is believed the UAW is aiming at a $2-a-day

general raise based on the UAW s calculation that the cost of liv­ing has leaped 20 to 25 per cent since January.

A figure in the neighborhood of $2-a-day is errierging as the goal of the CIO unions. This is indicated by the specific de­mands being made by the CIO United Rubber Workers and the CIO Oil Workers International Union.URW DEMANDS

The URW has called for re­opening of the wage contracts with the “Big Pour” of the rub­ber industry, Goodrich, Good­year. Firestone and U.S. Rubber. Its demands include a general 26-cent an hour wage raise.

At the URW Wage Policy Com­mittee meeting on Oct. 27-28, a majority of the delegates favored the principle of an escalator clause guaranteeing automatic wage increases for every increase in living costs. However, a final decision on this demand was de­ferred.

The CIO oil workers, who had the honor of leading off the his­toric postwar strike wave in September 1945, are now asking another 25-cent an hour raise.

What the powerful CIO United Steel Workers will ask is a sub­ject of considerable speculation. But Philip Murray has intim­ated the steelworkers wage pol­icy committee, which meets Dec. 15, will seek “a healthy increase.”

AFL unions have not opened any general wage drive. But the United Mine Workers have forc­ed the government into nego­tiations aimed at new wage gains.

Higher Rent Ceilings Scheduled, Truman Indicates In Statement

Truman gave advance warning last Saturday that he is bowing to the demands of the real estate hogs and will soon boost rent ceilings.

A general hike in rents willstrike a further terrible blow at the living standards of millions of workers and other poor ten­ants who are already reduced to bare subsistence by the inflation.

Hundreds of thousands of peo­ple now stretching their shrink­ing dollars to the limit and go­ing into debt, face the danger of eviction because they will be un­able to meet the new extortionate demands of the big landlords.

Announcing the removal of all price, wage and salary controls except ceilings on sugar, rice and rents Truman stated on Nov. 9 that "it may be that some ad­justment of rents will be re­quired.”

Truman did not state how much more the rent hogs will be permitted to grab, but the Na­tional Association of Real Es­tate Boards is heading a nation­wide landlord drive for rent in­creases of 15 to 30 per cent.

Administration advisors claim

Auto Worker Tells How Union Won

Hiring of NegroesSee Page 2

that the only way to maintain any rent ceilings is to give the landlords another big slice of the workers’ incomes.

I t is a virtual certainty that giving in to the landlords by permitting limited rent increases will not satisfy them. They will only feel encouraged . to push harder, for elimination of all rent control.

Experience has shown that any concession to the profiteers, as in the case of the meat and dairy trusts;, only makes them greedy for more. The raising of rent ceil­

Philippine Regime Launches Fierce Strikebreaking Drive

The Philippine govern­ment’s dictatorial order for­bidding its employes to strike quickly led to prepar­ations for a general strike of thousands of workers in Manila.

Nine unions voted to take strike action on Nov. 11. They ir-hided printers, sheet metal workers, shoemakers, tobacco .corkers, vegetable oil workers, • oodworkers, cordage workers,

shell and button makers, and employes of the government- operated Philippine Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The action was proposed at a meeting of 22 unions affiliated to the Congress of Labor Or- g. rizations, a Philippine coun­terpart of the CIO.

Other unions planned further discussions on the sympathy strike, while the Manila Elecr trie Company’s transportation and maintenance workers an­nounced that they would begin a walkout to protest the Roxas regime’s strikebreaking moves.

These actions were quick re­plies to the government’s arbi­trary treatment of city workers. On Nov. 6, 12 or more strikers were arrested in the Manila administration’s strikebreaking drive, arid charged with “incit­ing to sedition” because they posted handbills.

Frantically attempting to break the city workers’ strike for higher wages, the administra­tion herded unemployed workers, including those in the National Government “labor pools,” to clean garbage from the city streets.

Manila’s Municipal Board Chairman assailed American CIO seamen for voting financial and moral assistance to their striking Philippine brothers. This act of workers’ solidarity he termed “Interfering in local af­fairs” by “foreigners,” although the Philippine government it­self is in open collaboration with Wall Street.

ings would soon lead to removal of all rent controls.

Millions of tenants are now faced with the choice of accept­ing unmerciful rent-gouging and wholesale evictions, or organizing mass resistance to further rent boosts through rent strikes, de­monstrations at real estate of­fices and city halls, and other forms of militant action.

87 Per Cent Oppose War Against USSR

Eighty-seven per cent of the people in the U nited States th in k there would never be a w ar w ith the Soviet Union if the people of bbth countries could make the decision. That is the finding of a nation-wide survey made by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Den­ver.

Despite Wall Street’s hyster­ical anti-Soviet campaign, only nine per cent of the population here think that the people themselves would ever decide to start a war. The balance, four per cent, are undecided.

Asked about “causes of dis­agreement” between the United States and Russian, 21 per cent couldn’t think of any. And 73 per cent think that the dis­agreements in any case would never be serious enough to go to war over.

That doesn’t mean they think there won’t be a war, though. They have little faith in Wall Street’s intentions, or the abili­ty of the UN to keep peace. Sur­veys made by the same bureau since V-J Day have shown that 60 per cent of the people think tha*t the United States will be at war again within the next 25 years. They expect to be dragged into another slaughter regard­less of how they feel about it.

Once again the people have shown that one of the best weap­ons against wrar is The M ili­tant’s demand: Take the war­making powers out of the hands of Congress! Let the people vote on the question of war or peace!

Prices Hit New High Following Truman Order

New leaps in prices have followed Truman’s announ­cement last week of the de­control of virtually all consum­ers’ goods.

Truman’s latest capitulation to the Wall Street priee-gougers has brought still deeper slashes in the American workers' living standards.

Among the food items soar­ing in price are meats, butter, flour, bakery products, fats and oils. Beef, pork and lamb again have gone up in price after a temporary slight decline when hoarded meats, backed up in warehouses were dumped on the market.

In the week after Truman’s or­der, wholesale hog prices jumped $2 to $4 per 100 pounds. Whole­sale butter advanced three cents a pound and flour 15 cents per 100 pounds. These will lead to sharp advances in retail prices. Moreover, by mid-winter, an­other meat shortage is anticipat­ed, which will drive prices up still further. Already there is a slack­ening in livestock sent to the slaughter houses.

Big price rises on shoes amoun­ting to 15 and 25 per cent above present levels are forecast. Hide prices have already shot up from 15 y2 cents to 32 cents a pound. Rayon, a popular textile for low- priced garments, will soon be out of reach of many consumers as a result of expected higher prices.

Numerous other consumer items are jumping in price, in­cluding household appliances of all kinds, clothing, and furniture.

With the standard six-room $6,000 house already selling for $11,500, one of the toughest blows to workers and veterans seeking housing is the decontrol of build­ing materials. The black market to which most of these materials were previously diverted is re­moved, but black market prices have now become legal. Instead of low-cost homes and apart­ment house projects, construction materials wall flow into the build­ing of commercial buildings and homes for the rich.

This will aggravate the hous­ing crisis and increase the pres­sure for sky-high rents.

Democrats And Republicans To Gang Up Against Labor

By William F. WardeThe differences between Democrats and Re­

publicans on domestic policy, which have grown smaller in recent years, w ill dwindle to zero dur­ing the next session of Congress. That is the in­evitable conclusion to be drawn from President Truman’s post election promise of co-operation with the Republican ma­jority.

As Truman himself declared, there has been complete agree­ment between the two capitalist parties on foreign policy. “Mem­bers oi, both parties in and out of the Congress have participat­ed in the inner council in pre­paring, and in actually carrying out, the foreign policies of our government.” In addition to “strengthening and extending this practice,” Truman in his

TRUMAN

statement of policy now offers to extend this bipartisan policy in­to the field of domestic affairs.

“I shall co-operate in every proper manner with members of th e (Republican - controlled) Congress,” says the Democratic chief, “and my hope and prayer is that this spirit of co-operation will be reciprocated.” What this means in practice is that the Re­publican majority in Congress will dictate the main line of po­licy—and Truman is ready to go along just as far as he can.

Truman’s open declaration of submission to the Republicans removes the last pretense that any appreciable differences sep­arate the two parties. I t serves notice upon the workers that his administration intends to steer an even more conservative course and will drive steadily toward the right. This means intensified reaction all along the line, di­rected first and foremost against

organized labor.Truman’s statement of policy

also knocks the last prop from under the vain hope of the “liberal” wing in the Democratio ranks that the party can be swerved from its headlong rusU toward the right. The Truman- Byrnes gang has complete con­trol of the Democratic machine. The routed New Deal “progres­sives” are a scattered and de­moralized remnant.

This is recognized by Henry Wallace himself in his extremely pessimistic comment upon the election. To prevent a Republican victory in 1948, Wallace looks not to the successful reformation of the Democratic party, but to mistakes of the Republians.

“Frankly, speaking as a real­ist,” he said, “I don’t think there is a ghost of a show for a pro­gressive winning in 1948, unless and until the Republicans make . . . a mess of things.” I f the leader of the “liberal” Democrats thus dismisses the possibility of changing the administration’s course, what ground can the workers have for giving support to Truman?

PAC leaders say they will not. alter the policy of supporting "progressive” capitalist candi­dates which aided the Republi­can victory this year. The work­ers can prevent the Republicans from securing complete control of the government in 1948 only by compelling these cowardly leaders to break with Truman and form a Labor Party without delay.

Accusing Truman of “ap­peasing the forces of reac­tionary greed” by his decon­trol order, New York State CIO President Louis Hollan­der warned of a coming strike upsurge and increasing pres­sure for third party action by organized labor.

Hollander predicted that such a third party would be­come a “first party” here, just as the Labor Party became the leading party in England. Nevertheless, instead of call­ing for a break with the Dem­ocrats, H o l l a n d e r merely begged Truman to “return to Roosevelt’s policies.”

Sen. Morse, GOP “Liberal" Minimizes Anti-Labor Threat

Senator W ayne L. Morse, Oregon Republican, is try ing to sell the workers a b ill of goods about how well the Repub­licans are going to look after labor’s interests.

Morse, one of the leaders of the new-found “liberal'’ wing of Wall Street’s GOP, has assured the workers they have nothing to fear from the Republicans.

Speaking over a national ra­dio hook-up under AFL spon­sorship, Morse tried to convince the workers that the way to avoid harsh anti-labor legislation is to place their dependence on “liberals” like himself.

At the same time, he sought to disarm labor about the real menace of new union-busting laws that the Republican Con­gress is preparing to push through.

Morse, who is posing as a go- slow-with-labor Republican, said the Republican victory was not a mandate for “any particular anti-labor legislation such as the Case bill.”

But Morse does advocate just a “little” revision of the Nation­al Labor Relations Act by giv­ing more “equal rights” under the act to employers.

He doesn’t go so far in advo­

cating restrictions on labor as .Senator Ball, for instance. But he thinks some laws should be passed establishing “union res­ponsibility” and enforcing “sanc­tity of contracts.”

Morse, of course, isn’t really ajainst anti-labor laws. He just thinks it’s more feasible to slip them _over in piece-meal fashion and by easy stages. That way, the workers won’t know what hit them.

What Morse is especially con­cerned about is that any attempt to put over drastic omnibus anti- labor laws, like the Ball-Burton- Hatch bill or Case bill, will arouse fierce resistance from the labor movement.

He prefers to avoid such re­sistance by a more cautious method. While one section of the Republicans waves the big club over labor the “liberal” wing like Morse will attempt to gain the labor leaders’ accept­ance of limited restrictions un­der threat of harsher measures if they don’t agree.

This is the well-tried method used by the Democrats in put­ting over their anti-labor laws. I t is known as the “hard cop-soft cop” technique.

A number of AFL leaders are

trying to get the workers to put their confidence in Republican “liberals” like Morse, just a« they previously entrusted the de» fense of labor’s interests to “pro­gressive” Democrats.

This policy side-tracks any effective labor struggle against vicious measures in Congress, The "progressives” always re­treat and fold up. Anti-labor laws are passed. And the work­ers find themselves betrayed and demoralized at the last moment.

The Republicans are deter­mined to push through new anti-labor laws. I f they don’t it won’t be because of “liberals” like Morse, but because thè American labor movement, more power!-’1 than ever in its history, conducts a militant fight.

The Republicans know and fear labor’s power. That is why they put up “liberals” like Morse to decoy the organized workers from the effective use of their power.

I f the workers put their de­pendence on the Republican “liberals” rather than on their own strength in action, they are certain to get anti-labor laws. They can beat back Congress’s threat if they rely on their owa united fighting action.

PAGE TWO T H E M I L I T A N T SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1946

By An Auto WorkerOur union has won the hiring of Negro workers at the

General Motors plant in Southgate, California. I t ’s an in­teresting story that I would like to tell readers of The M ilita n t.

The story began about a year ago, when the General Motors plant here was starting to do a lot of hiring. A few of the most m ilitant and progressive trade Unionists were in the habit of going to the District Auto Coun­cil meetings. We would linger around the hall after the meet­ing to talk about our problems, and on one of these occasions we got to discussing the kind Of hiring done at the Southgate plant.

A Negro brother in another C IO union asked If any Negroes wer# being hired. We admitted (hat they were not. We talked K over and decided to do some- Kilng about it.F IR ST STEP

Our first step was to convince Kie local union leadership that Rome sort of action should be started to remedy the situation.A t first there was some oppo­sition from a few of the back­ward elements in the leadership.Who argued that we shouldn’t

**stir up any trouble,” and that we ought to “let management handle the hiring problem.”

The more advanced workers pointed out the necessity for all workers to unite in their strug­gles. and asked “What kind of unity is it, i f we permit dis­crimination in our shops?”

It took some weeks of dis­cussion, but we convinced the local leaders that it was bur job to end discrimination in hiring. After the GM nation-wide strike was over and we could renew the struggle, we started in on the local management.LAME EXCUSES

The bosses gave all sorts of excuses: “I t wouldn’t work out,” and “it was a problem even to decide how to bring Negro work­ers into the plant.” They claim­ed that white workers would ob­ject. They said it W'ould be "un­fa ir to white workers looking for Jobs with the corporation.”

The union explained that it would handle the “objections” Cf white workers, as the United Auto Workers constitution pro­vides no one shall be discrimi­nated against. The union also was willing to help find the Ne­gro workers. But the company declined the union’s aid, and said the management would handle everything.

Then the company raised a new excuse: That the Negro poses a “special problem as to how they should be handled in the plant.” The union countered that there was no special prob­lem; pointed out that Negro Workers had proved as good as white workers during the war. Then the company tried to stall by saying it would “get in touch with some Negro leaders in the community and get their ad­vice.’’ The union offered to ob­tain any Negro leader they had in mind, but the company said again, “We’ll take care of it.”

The company finally com­plained that it didn’t know “how many to hire”—whether to hire

them “in proportion to the Ne­gro and white population in the whole country, or the propor­tion in a given area around the plant.” The union felt that they should be hired as they applied. But the company shoved the an­swer aside and said they were "going to give that more serious thinking.”UNION DISCUSSIONS

Meanwhile discussions were also taking place among the lo­cal union members and leaders. There were quite a few heated debates on the union floor and in the plant between the more advanced and more backward workers. By patient explaining we convinced some. Those who insisted that they were born in the deep south and did not go for the idea at all, were finally told to read the CIO constitu­tion.

When we had the union pretty solid in agreement, we decided to take more positive action. The Bargaining Committee went to the bosses to find out why out of hundreds being hired, none were Negroes. The company said that Negroes did not meet the requirements. The union de­manded a list of these require­ments, and the company finally said it was hiring only veterans from the ages of 21 to 28 with a year’s overseas service and a high school education.

We contacted our Negro brothers in other CIO unions. They sent men with all qualifi­cations to the plant. Time went by, and none were hired. They reported that they had been treated politely, told they would be notified when to report for work—but never called In.T IM E TO ACT

The Bargaining Committee again asked what was holding things up. The company said it was “working on it.” The union knew that no more stalling could be permitted, because hiring would not go on much longer. We decided to act.

We requested help from Negro civic organizations, Negro lead­ers in the community, the UAW regional office and the UAW- CIO president. Everyone did his part magnificently. Soon we re­ceived a communication from the UAW International telling how it was putting pressure on the corporation in Detroit, what the results of the action were, and what the corporation was going to do about it. I t was not long before we had Negroes working in the plant.

The first day that Negroes came to work here, the place be­gan to buzz with all sorts of anti-Negro talk from the back­ward elements. The first Negro workers were assigned to two of the Bargaining Committeemen as their helpers.THE VICTORY

When anti-Negro members came to the local union leaders to try to get the Negroes out of the plant, they were told the UAW-CIO policy. Some still grumbled and called the union all sorts of names, but they could not get anyone to lead an anti- Negro fight.

Today anti-Negro sentiment Is on the decline. The boys are used to seeing Negroes around, and get along very well with them. There are other Issues for us to take up, and the Negro Issue is dissolving by itself. Our Negro brothers are becoming in­tegrated in the life of the union, participating in its activities, in sports, etc.

This is the story of how Ne­groes came to be hired in the General Motors plant in South- gate, California. I hope it will help smooth the way In other plants.

These Charts Tell The Whole Story On Wages And Prices

PEAK IN CORPORATE PROFITS(M ILLIONS OF DOLLARS)

Though corporate profits before taxes are

down sharply from the wartime p eak. . .

taxes are down even more, due to repeal of

the excess profits tax.

Result : Profits after taxes are a t an all-tim e

high.

PRICES, TAXES AND WAGES

D o e s not include the 5 points approved by Executive Order in Fall of 1945

B u t t he chart on the right, "Prices,Taxes and Wages,” shows that since V-J Day average weekly take-home pay is down nearly nine per cent. With prices up an average of 11 per cent in the same time, according to the very conservative government figure, real wages have declined a total of 20 per cent. The average worker’s family can buy today 20 per cent less than a year ago.

Bosses Withhold Goods, But Want Labor Speedup

By A rt PreisThe Big Business answer to the depression that every­

one agrees is coming is to call for “ more production” and “ no wage increases.”

Jailed Conscientious Objectors Suffer Fascist-Like Brutalities

By Evelyn AtwoodNEW YORK — Albon Man, secretary of the Committee

for Amnesty, which is conducting a drive for presidential amnesty for all conscientious objectors by Christmas, was himself a CO prisoner fortwo and a h a lf years. He and Leonard Mehr, another CO on parole, who is working for the Committee, told me the story of their struggles inside prison against Jim-Crow segregation and prison tyranny, when I visit­ed the Committee’s office at 5 Beekman Street last week.

Both Man and Mehr were sent to Danbury, which is considered "moderate custody” as compared kith other federal prisons. But when COs become leaders of strikes and protests, they are transferred to other and harsher prisons.SHOCKING STORY

The shocking story of brutal­ity against prisoners in the Springfield Prison-Medical Cen­ter was smuggled out of that pri­son in 1944 by Murphy and Tay­lor, heroic COs who were trans­ferred from Danbury after their 82-day hunger strike. Man and Mehr were also transferred, but not before they had helped force Important concessions out of the Danbury prison authorities.

They were lodged in the H art­ford House of Danbury, the Jim- Crow section of which was called Upper Hartford.

“Recalcitrants were also lock­ed up in Upper Hartford,” they told me. “But this only made it a political hot bed. Here we or­ganized our fight against dis­crimination, against extreme cen­sorship, against regimentation. All the prison authorities suc­ceeded in doing was to help us spread our ideas.”

The COs managed to invent a crude blotter-type mimeograph device with which they ran off leaflets for general distribution. Prison authorities attempted to restrict the agitation of the COs to their fight for freedom.

But the COs took an interest In everything, not only inside but outside the prison. “I f men were given a rough deal at the hospi­tal, or if the food was bad, we went to bat for them,” they re­ported.

Through the press they watch­ed what was going on in the labor movement outside. Among other actions taken, Mehr said h wrote a letter to his union, the National Maritime Union, demanding that it take action to halt the shipment of arms and ammunition to be used against the Indonesian fighters for free­dom. “I received an answer, but they wouldn’t reply to my re­quest,” he said.SEND GREETINGS

The prisoners as a group smug­gled greetings outside to Indon­esians, Koreans and others. They wrote: “We who are political prisoners, send greetings to you who are carrying on the fight against imperialism.”

In Danbury 350 of the 600 pri­son population were COs. Today about 100 still remain there. In 1943, when Man was sent to Dan­bury, he joined a group of 23 Negro and white prisoners to conduct an organized fight against Jim-Crow in the prison dining room and to permit Negro

and white prisoners to fratern­ize.

“We could never allow it.” they were told by the prison author­ities. “There would be race riots and all sorts of disorders.”

The men replied by going on strike. A general work stoppage by the prisoners backed up their demands. Man and the other leaders were thrown into solitary, where they remained for four and a half months.ALL KINDS

“There were all kinds among us,” Man related. “Some were V. obblies, some Fundamentalists. Many had union backgrounds. One had been an organizer in the NMU, another an organizer in the United Mine Workers. Ra.ph Di Gia, organizer in the CIO Paper & Novelty Workers union, demanded and received The Militant, after the author­ities v ere forced, under pressure, to allow papers into solitary.”

The strike ended in victory on the day before Christmas, when Merl Alexander, the warden, said he would cease Jim-Crow segre­gation in the dining room. “The new system worked perfectly,” Man said. “Even the few South­erners, who grumbled a little, gave in, and it has worked ever since.”

Two Negro COs, Wallace Nel­son, brother of Clarence Nel­son, president of the St. Paul NAACP, and Thomas Parks, neither of them pacifists, went on a hunger strike against their imprisonment for refusing to serve in a Jim-Crow army. For 106 days they endured the tor­ture of forced feeding through a tube in the nose.

They were finally released in July, and are continuing the struggle against Jim-Crow and for full amnesty for all COs. To­day, Man told me, James Otsuka, a Japanese-Amerlcan demand­ing full amnesty, is still on a hunger strike which he began on July 5.SPEED-UPS

As a result of their militant activities, Man was transferred to Lewisburg and Mehr to Milan federal prisons. In the new pri­sons they joined with other COs and continued the fight. They

exposed the speed-up in the pri­son factory systems. In one fac­tory where they made gloves and parachutes for the weather bur­eau, men lost many fingers and parts of their hands because of the speeded-up cutting instru­ments.

During the war COs refused to work on anything contributing to the war effort. Regular in­mates, mainly men with depend­ents, took these jobs to earn a little money. They were paid from $8 to $17 a month.

The COs in most prisons were highly regarded by all the in­mates, who accepted them as leaders. “Once the prison author­ities gave in to the demands of the COs, they had to let up on all the Inmates,” Man pointed out.

The Committee for Amnesty is calling upon the whole labor movement, CIO, AFL and inde­pendent, to back up its cam­paign for presidential amnesty for all COs. There are still 1,000 in prison, out of the 6,000 given prison sentences since 1940, Full amnesty would also restore the civil rights of which all of them were deprived.

The whole labor movement should support the just demands of these political victims of Wall Street's war machine.

Wall Street’s program was summed up by Marriner S. Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He said a “slump” can be overcome if (1) “productivity per worker -can be raised^this is most important” and if (2) “large-scale industrial disputes and further general wage increases can be avoided.”

There is one striking omission from this program. It makes no reference to profits. It tells the workers to work harder and turn out more production for the same or less wages. But what about the 11-billion dollar prof­its the corporations snatched this year.—20 per cent more than even their huge average annual wartime steal?KEY TO AIMS

This conspicuous reluctance to discuss profits gives a key to the real aims of Big Business in its all-out drive for “more pro­duction” and "no wage in­creases.”

A depression for the workers means that there is widespread unemployment or part-time em­ployment and declining purchas­ing power. But for the bosses a depression means primarily one thing—declining profits.

We remember how the gov­ernment and Wall Street were calling it a “boom” back in Au­gust 1937 while there were still 8% to 10 million unemployed. That “boom” consisted of high profits. So today, when the em­ployers talk about “avoiding a depression,” they really mean keeping their profits up to peak levels.

I t doesn’t matter to the capi­talist whether he produces more goods or less. What he wants is more profits.WHAT HAPPENS

The monopolies would like to sell as much goods as possible, produced at the lowest wage cost and sold at the highest price. But what soon happens is that the masses can’t buy all the goods produced with the low wages they receive and the high prices they must pay. Merchandise piles up in . the warehouses.

Then, rather than keep turn­ing out more goods they can’t sell, the bosses curtail produc­tion or "cut costs” by paying the workers less for more work, so the capitalists can sell at low prices or sell less goods and stid make undiminished profits.

The reason why a depression is coming In the near future is. that there is already “too much” production—that is, more goods than can be absorbed by the available market.

Thus, Lewis L. Schellback, economist for Standard & Poor’s Corp., investors’ information ser­vice, stated that a principal con­tributing factor to the “reces­sion believed ahead” is “the cur­rent excess of production over consumption . . . a phenomenon of peak prosperity.” PRODUCTON TO SHRINK

Another Standard & Poor’s consultant. Edward Donahue wrote in the N. Y. World-Tele­gram that by March 1947 “the major shortages will have been licked.” He added that “the same manpower . . . will produce a lot more . . . but the payrolls won’t increase" and “by next September some items will be piling up and production will have to shrink to the size of the market.”

In fact, goods are piling up. right now in the midst of all the talk about “more production.” This is shown by the unprece­dented accumulation of more than 32 billion dollars of inven­tories by the end of September —and the pile is growing.

Leo M. Cherne, executive sec­retary of the Research Institute of America, a Wall Street-fi­nanced agency, admitted at a recent meeting of New York bus­

inessmen that “in far too many cases, management’s left hand has been accumulating invento­ries while its right hand has been advocating productivity.”

An example of this is the auto­mobile industry which has been complaining about “low produc­tion” for months. This month, however, according to Automo­tive News, production of passen­ger cars and truck: is expected to surpass the July 1941 peak.

But we learned last Aug. 31 from Ralph Hendershot, finan­cial editor of the N. Y. World- Telegram, that “goods were be­ing accumulated faster than they were being shipped to consum­ers” and particularly in the auto industry where “storage space has become filled with cars ready to go out as soon as these short parts are available. Obvi­ously these virtually finished cars are included in inventory.”

The hue and cry for “more production” has gone on while tens of billions of dollars in goods have been withheld from the market.“DIFFICULTIES”

On top of this, we learn from a statement on Oct. 30 of the War Assets Administration that it is "running into difficulty” selling 11 billion dollars’ worth of government-owned "sur­pluses” and expects to have still another 12% billion dollars’ worth to sell soon. "Industrial production is rapidly filling the gap of unfilled demand.” says the WAA, and “these develop­ments foretell a shrinking mar­ket and lower recovery for sur­plus.”

So the clamor for “more pro­duction” really adds up to a de­mand for lower “labor costs” to maintain profits even if total production declines or prices fall.

The corporations plan to un­burden the full load of the com­ing depression on the workers. They are preparing to maintain their profits, despite lower total, production, by squeezing more labor out of each worker. By re­ducing the “labor cost” per unit of production and by reducing the number of workers required to turn out the same quantity of production, the bosses will make as much profit as ever.

Transit Strike Threat In N. Y. Wins Concession

N EW Y O R K , Nov. 12 — T h re a t of a strike th a t would tie up a ll city transportation here forced M ayor O ’D wyer yesetrday to concede cne of two basic demands in the dispute with the CIO Transport Work­ers Union. These just demands, for retroactive pay Increases and an election for sole collective bargaining rights, had been ap­proved by the mayors own Ad­visory Transit ^Committee, but subsequently rejected by the Board of Transportation.

O’Dwyer announced last night that the way had been cleared to retroactive payment to last July 1 of the agreed-upon 20-cent an hour -wage increase. The remain­ing issue is the demand for a collective bargaining election, which the Board of Transporta­tion has persistently refused, al­though also recommended by the mayor’s advisory committee.

A scheduled subway strike last spring was called off under pres­sure of O'Dwyer and CIO Presi­dent Philip Murray. The TW U agreed to submit its demands to a special committee established by O'Dwyer. After long delibera­tion. this committee made it« recommendations last September.MASS MEETING

On Oct. 4 the Board of Trans­portation agreed to wage increas­es but refused to act on the other two disputed demands. This in effect ruled them out and re­versed the Advisory Committee’» recommendations.

The TW U held a mass meetm* of 6,000 workers last week be­fore the offices of the Board of Transportation. At this meeting, TW U officials announced a gen­eral membership strike vote would be taken tomorrow and Thursday.

This brought O’Dwyer hastily back from a California trip for last-minute attempts to avert a strike that has been threaten­ed three times since he- took of­fice last January 1.

GM Auto Worker At Southgate Tells How Union Won Hiring Of Negroes

These charts are from the October report of Reconversion Director Steelman. The one on the left, headed “ Peak in Corporate Pro­fits ,” shows that the profiteers by the end of the third quarter of 1946 were raking in pro­fits, after taxes, at an annual rate of 11 bil­lion dollars. Right now, due to further price rises, the rate has reached 14 billion—nearly five billion over the tremendous annual war­time average.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1946 T H E M I L I T A N T PAGE THREE

Victims Of Gestapo Torture Need Your HelpThe American Committee fo r European

Workers Relief has made public a letter i t has received from Solidarité In te rna tio ­nal Ouvrière, a French d istributing com­mittee which cooperates w ith the ACEWR. The letter is from one of the French work­ers who is receiving help in the form of food, clothing and medicine collected by the ACEWR. In i t this anti-fascist worker describes his arrest and imprisonment by the Gestapo:

On the 26th of October, 1943, my wife and I were arrested by the Gestapo. We were accused of circulating and propagat­ing in the German army pamphlets aimed at the demoralization and corruption of the German soldiers, and sabotage of the German Military defense. This work was effectively done in union with the Germans, both refugees and anti-Nazis.

The results of this work were already

rather important when the Gestapo was tipped off. They succeeded in introducing an agent-provocateur into the ranks of a group of German soldiers in Brittany and in obtaining information through him which though vague, was sufficient to pro­ceed to an inquiry and some arrests.

My wife and I were arrested on the morn­ing of October 6. For 17 days I was sub­mitted to an examination on two princi­pal questions: “What is Victor?" ( Ger­man member of our group) and “Who is Vidal?” (a French member). The method used in this examination was simple. No discussion — only physical and mental torture.

From six o’clock in the morning on. I was shut up in a cell painted entirely white, 60 centimeters wide and 130 centi­meters long (100 centimeters are a few inches more than one yard). I was made

to kneel on a triangular steel bar, my wrists pulled back and bound behind to my ankles. My head was held in a helmet with a sharp point at the forehead and two points at the sides of the head. A kind of sunlight supplied by a 300 volt lamp was directed at my face, provoking the congestion and the rupture of the blood vessels of the eyes, ears and nose.

I stayed in this position until 11 p.m. except for two interruptions of one hour — one in the morning, one in the afternoon

—when the aforesaid interrogation took place. I was then laid down, my abdomen on a table, my feet, ankles and buttocks bare. A policeman put the proofs under my eyes and asked me the questions about Victor and Vidal; two policemen beat me with a lash on the naked parts of my body.

This procedure not having succeeded in

making me talk, it was replaced at the endof eight days by hanging by the wrists held behind, weights suspended from the feet, blows of the lash on the back. After this second procedure proved as ineffec­tive as the first, hanging by the feet and immersion in an electrode bath with elec­trodes at the feet, with a high frequency current, was tried. Finally, pressure by means of presses on the ends of the fingers, toes and sexual organs.

After each of these procedures, I was taken before the headlight and the steel bar. In the evening, at eleven p.m., they took me back to the prison where I was again chained hand and foot to a ring nailed to the wall. I slept curled up in this position on a metal frame without a mat­tress. Cold soup was placed on a stool near my head in such a way that I had to lap it up like a dog.

On November 23 the torture and ques­tionings were stopped. I stayed in the pri­son but this time without chains and with a mattress on which to sleep, until the 26th of January, at which time I was de­ported to Buchenwald. I stayed there for 43 days imd on the 13th of March I was transferred to the subterranean camp at Dora, where I lived under conditions now known to all as having existed in the ex­termination camps.

During my inquisition in the Paris pri­sons, I contracted serious eye and muscular lesions, and during my stay at Dora I de­veloped pulmonary tuberculosis which makes it impossible for me to work now.

My wife arrested at the same time as I, was not tortured physically except for sev­eral slaps and punches. The pressure was principally psychological; description of the treatment I was undergoing, a lie that

our little girl had been arrested.She was deported to Ravensbruck where

she worked 12 hours a day on the grounds, then to Hanover where she was put to work curing rubber »— finally to Belsen which was particularly severe. She con­tracted typhus and suffers now from all the post-typhus effects, severe debility, bone disease, cardiac lesions and tuberculosis.

I f you wish to help th is heroic an ti­fascist and his fam ily and others like him , make a donation to the ACEWR today. $10 puts 29 pounds of food on a European worker’s table. $1.54 pays the postage of an 11 -pound package of food and medi­cine.

Make a ll checks and money orders pay­able to ACEWR and m ail them and a ll donations of clothing, etc., to 197 Second Ave., New York 3, N. Y.

W ages, Prices and P rofits

How The Monopolies Make Their Profits

■ — By Warren Creel--------------------------------------We live In the age of monopoly, and of monopoly

competition. The central clue to the age of monopoly is the fact which we have previously discussed, that mono­polies are parasites. They get monopoly profit only by draining labor, value from production carried on by other industries. They don’t produce the labor value of their own super-profit. They can’t, because they get super­profit by holding down production, by selling monopoly- controlled goods at high prices.

Parasites need victims. So in the age of monopoly we see more than an increase of monopolies. We see an in ­crease of victims of the monopolies.

Monopolies can be found only in connection with the economic victims they feed on, just as sheep-killing wolves can be found only where there are sheep. Therefore in the age of monopoly we must look at the economic scene as a whole. In our own country we find at one end of the scale a few giant financial houses, making great profits without any production. To make that possible there must be, at the other end of the scale, depressed industries like agriculture, carrying on production without any profit. In between there is a wide range of industries, paying more or less of their labor-value to the monopolists.

The monopolies get great reserves of profit, so they are protected in part from economic disasters. But other industries, which lose profits to the monopolies, are h it even harder by economic crises. As Lenin put it, “The statement that cartels (monopolies) can abolish crises is a fable spread by bourgeois economists who at all costs desire to place capitalism in a favorable light. On the contrary, when monopoly appears in certain branches of industry, i t intensifies the anarchy inherent in capitalist production as a whole . . . The privileged position of the most highly cartelized industry . . . causes a ‘still greater lack of concerted organization’ in Other branches of pro­duction . . ” (Imperialism, page 28).

Some economists have said that capitalism would be­come healthy in an era of “ super-monopoly” or “ ultra­imperialism” when all basic industries have reached the monopoly stage. (We have practically reached such a point of universal monopoly right now.) In that day, they said, all industries would be strong and stable. But capitalism becomes less healthy and less stable as monopolies grow, and the Marxist analysis shows us why. A wolf is safe and secure while he lives among a good supply of sheep. I t is the sheep that suffer insecurity. But that does not prove that an age of universal peace will dawn on the day when all the sheep are used up and nothing remains but “safe and secure” wolves.

We know that the wolves would then have to start eating each other. The result would be not universal peace but universal war. Looking around us we see that the age of monopoly has brought universal war in fact.

Toward the end of the last century, in the few leading industrial nations of this world, monopolies grew to the point where they used up the home supply of competitive industry. That ended the normal era of monopoly super­profit. The monopolies had to look outside their home ter­ritory for production and markets to feed on. That mono­poly search for parasite income brought the age of modern imperialism. In a few short years the capitalist industrial nations of the world conquered and seized most of the area of the globe for imperialist colonies. Lenin analyzed this process in detail in Imperialism. He defined modern imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism because the drive for imperialist expansion comes from monopoly need for parasite profits.

After a while the imperialist nations used up the grow­ing room in occupied colonial territory. Then they had to begin taking colonies away from each other. This was monopoly competition on an even higher level. Great na­tional combines of capitalists fought for markets, not with salesmen, but in the direct way with guns and bombs. The two imperialist world wars are the most intense forms that monopoly competition has reached so far.

The fru it of this competitive struggle is the same as always. We find now, at one end of the scale, a victorious United States, but at the other end of the scale we see a world of nations economically depressed, unable to rise out of poverty. These are the two necessary sides that make up the monopoly scene on a world scaje today. And even while the American monopolists celebrate their vic­tory, they find that the depressed world supplies only a ' poor feeding ground for their needs.

This economic situation is the setting for the present problem of wages and prices.

T e rro r In Jerusalem

As British imperialism continues its terror against the Jews in Palestine, Jerusalem looks like a concentration camp. Above, at left, a man and woman are searched at the barbed wire barrier. At right, a child is roughly gone over in the hunt for “hidden weapons."

Fascists Score Important Gains In Six Italian Cities

accompanied on the one hand by the decline of the capitalist cen­ter party — the Christian De­mocrats — and on the other hand by the resurgence of the extreme reactionary wing.

The Stalinists and the Social­ists running separately or in a bloc captured the lead in all

the cities except Palermo. Thd Christian Democrats lost every­where. The neo-fascist Common Man Front surged strongly for­ward.

In the elections last June this neo-fascist party was unable to poll more than 10 per cent of the vote anywhere except in two southern cities. Palermo and Naples. In the space of five months the situation has sharp­ly altered. The Common Man Front has now grown powerful enough to take the lead in Pal­ermo, to run second in Rome, third in Naples and fourth in Turin, Genoa and Florence.

Here even more strikingly

Communist Party Gets Highest French Vote

(Continued from Page 1)

Spain Under Franco- An Eyewitness Report

By A Spanish TrotskyistOct. 25—The first striking thing about Spain today is

the miserable situation of the masses on the one hand, and the luxury and wealth of the rich and “new rich” on the other hand. The average wage of a worker is 15 pesetas—a poor meal in a small re's-*1---------------------------------------

The official workers’ organiza­tions of Spain did not pay much attention to these strikes. The underground press hardly spoke of them, and this is not accident­al. The leadership of these or­ganizations counted on the “solution” of the Spanish prob­lem by the “democratic” imperi­alists.

Last August there was another manifestation of discontent. Some fat was distributed which was unfit for pigs. The house­wives of Barcelona hung their frying pans out of the window in protest. The police had to go from house to house to have these innocent instruments of protest taken away.UNDERGROUND PRESS

The .underground press is cir­culated from hand to hand. The Stalinist and union press does not deal so much with the prob­lems of the Spanish workers but with the pronouncements of the Allied imperialists or the Krem­lin bureaucracy. For example, an illegal issue of the Stalinist paper Treball was devoted solely to the speech of Stalin and the Five Year Plan. An issue of La Batalla published extracts of the speech of Roosevelt on the “Four Freedoms.”

The Anarcho-Syndicalist CNT, which in emigration is divided into two groups (one supporting the participation in the Giral Government, the other opposing this participation) in Spain is for the support or resigned to the support of this government. Nevertheless the rank and file cannot understand why this gov­ernment, which does not aid the underground, but which crawls in the big halls of the imperial­ists, should be supported.

From observations the guerril­la movement does not appear as strong as one outside Spain would imagine. There are, of course, in the Asturias and in the South, comrades living in the mountains; some have lived there since the end of the civil war. Everybody in Spain under­stands that the real possibilities are amongst the proletariat in the big centers, in the obscure and patient work of defense, of solidarity and preparation for the future.

I t Is urgent that the interna­tional proletariat understand the necessity of its solidarity with its Spanish brothers. An action which can be effective only if it is not limited to speeches and protest dispatches to “democrat­ic” ministers, but if it aims at mobilizing the masses to demon­strate against the Franco repre­sentatives abroad and the send­ing of goods to Spain, etc . . .

The problem for Spain remains the same as before and during

taurant costs 10 pesetas.The shortage of electrical

energy slows down the produc­tion and in consequence reduces the workers’ wrages.

The repression and police con­trol continue as before, but the demoralization of the officials is reflected by a certain relaxation of the measure controlling the hiring of labor. For example, to get work one formerly had to be a member of a Falangist organi­zation, and to fill out a form about his past political activity, etc.; these measures are now neglected by the workers as well as the bosses.SPY SYSTEM

The strong police apparatus is supported by spies. Recently the police succeeded in arresting the National Committee of the CNT (National Federation of Labor) and also some members of the POUM and of the young Span­ish section of the Fourth Inter­national.

In order to generate a “demo­cratic atmosphere” Franco, from time to time, releases some ele­ments of the workers’ parties, who are kept under police con­trol and are forbidden to leave special districts. This move is especially for the benefit of Franco’s Anglo-American sup­porters.

The Spanish people expected the removal of Franco with the end of the war, and were very much disillusioned. Even the Falangist officials thought their time was finished. After the vic­tory of the Labor Party in Eng­land new hopes were raised, and later again when the UN Con­ference met. Today everybody believes that Franco is maintain­ed only by the support of Britain.

In this situation the Spanish working class has no recognized leadership which tells the truth and points the way to the re­volutionary overthrow of the Franco regime.MASS OPPOSITION

Despite the repression and the highly developed police regime, there are numerous manifesta­tions of mass opposition to Fran­co’s regime.

The workers now organize the paying of dues for the under­ground trade unions—the CNT and the UGT (General Trade Union). The UGT is in the process of being reorganized in new areas and in Catalonia.

The workers of the textile in­dustries in Catalonia are in the vanguard of the struggle. A year ago strikes broke out in this region. These strikes were the most important movement of the anthFranco action. The start­ing point of this struggle was the demand for better food. A new strike wave is expected this winter.

the civil war—the problem of revolutionary leadership. This problem is especially difficult in the terrible conditions of illegali­ty and suppression, but there are some young militants in Spain as well as those in emigration who are struggling under the banner of the Fourth Interna­tional.ONLY ROAD

The ideas and program of the Fourth International which pre­viously were almost unknown are beginning now, to become known in Spain and to find a favorable response from the militant Span­ish youth. Against the "Alliance of Democratic Forces” (all the old organizations, W'ho have now invited the Monarchists, who be­trayed the workers), the Span­ish Trotskyists counterpose the alliance of workers.

Only this road, the unity of the masses around a genuine working class program can lead to the overthrow' of Franco. The road of the old leadership can only lead to another disaster and defeat for the working class.

more than 10 per cent. The combined capitalist parties now outweigh the workers’ parties on the parliamentary arena. These important changes have occurred in the space of a single year.

Whence came the losses of the workers’ parties and, conversely, the gains of the capitalist part­ies? They could come from one source and one only—the middle class. To put it in different words, while the growth of the CP denotes a shift in political line - ups within the working class itself, the above-mentioned losses in the combined CP-SP vote denote a shift of the French middle class away from labor and back into the camp of cap­italist reaction.ENEMIES GROW

The Stalinist and Socialist leaders justified, as they still do, their policy of collaborating with the capitalists on the ground that it would secure the support of the middle class. All they have secured thereby is the ali­enation of the middle class and the steady growth of the bitter­est enemies of the working class.

I t is the extreme Right, the parties that seek to establish the naked rule of capitalism on the basis of an authoritarian gov­ernment in France that have proved the greatest beneficiar­ies to date. As a matter of fact, the gains of the PRL and its af­filiates, especially the Gaullist Union, approximate quite closely the losses suffered by the two

working class parties since Oc­tober 1945.

The mechanism of this growth is as follows: The center cap­italist party, the MRP, siphons off the disillusioned middle class following of both the SP and the CP. Meanwhile the extreme Right grows at the expense of the MRP.

To sum up, the shift of the workers to the Stalinists ex­presses the instinctive striving of the working class as a whole toward the revolutionary solu­tion. The Stalinists along with the waning Socialists represent the main internal obstacle on this road. I t is a foregone con­clusion that they will attempt to continue the false and fatal pol­icy of maintaining the coalition government with the representa­tives of French capitalism. In this way they will continue to assure the forces of darkest re­action in France with a steadily expanding base.

As this is written no word has been received of the vote cast for the 121 candidates of the PCI, the French Trotskyists, who have campaigned for a break in the coalition with the capitalist MRP and for a reso­lute revolutionary policy. In the last elections the PCI. obtained 45,000 votes. I t is in this revo­lutionary regroupment, the con­ditions for which are now high­ly propitous, that the salvation of the French masses lies.

DE GASPERI

than in the case of France we have illustrated the mechanism whereby fascist reaction is able to reestablish itself as a power­ful force.

The growth of the Christian Democrats was made possible solely by the policy of collabora­tion with the capitalists follow­ed by the Socialists and the Stal­inists. The decline of the Chris­tian Democrats in the industrial cities has benefitted not the workers’ parties b u t' the capi­talist Right, and above all the fascist, who are gaining an ever firmer hold over the desperate middle classes.

Lenin's Teachings On DisarmamentBy Joseph Hansen

When Molotov urged “disarmament” and the “ outlaw­ing” of atomic warfare at the United Nations, the Stalin­ist Daily Worker of Oct. 31 hailed the proposal as “ in the great tradition of Soviet statemenship from the days of Lenin.”

This brazen attempt to picture Molotov as continuing the poli­cies of Lenin is a typical instance of the bottomless cynicism of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Only a membership completely ignorant of Lenin’s views on “disarma­ment” could be taken in by this lie of the Daily Worker.

Lenin analyzed the slogan of “disarmament” in an article that is one of the classics of the Marx­ist movement. I t is available in English on page 352 of Volume X IX of his Collected Works and in a slightly different translation on page 493 of The Bolsheviks and the World War, published by the Hoover Library on War, Rev­olution and Peace.

Lenin points out that the ad­vocates of the slogan have used the term “disarmament” in two different senses. Among revolu­tionary socialists, declares Lenin, the word was currently used in a wide general way to mean “disarming” or “unarming” — abolishing militarism altogether. And Lenin states that it is to “disarmament” in this wide meaning of the term he wishes to devote his article in order to destroy the illusion militarism can be ended without doing away with capitalism.LENIN’S VIEW

“Disarmament,” says Lenin, “is the ideal of socialism. There will be no wars in socialist society; consequently disarmament will be achieved. But whoever expects

that socialism will be achieved without a social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletar­iat is not a Socialist.”

Lenin meant by this that once socialism is established on a world scale, then militarism and wars like cannibalism will re­cede into the pre-history of man­kind. Socialism is based on the unification of the world’s econ­omy. This unification does away with the root cause of war, the splitting of economy into seg­ments confined within the strait- jacket of national boundaries and operated for the profit of tiny capitalist cliques.

Lenin considered this obvious to anyone who has given the least thought to the question of the causes of war. What he was pri­marily concerned about was how to achieve the socialism that will end the cause of war. And he considered that the capitalists will fight so energetically against socialism it can be predicted with certainty they will inevitably re­sort to armed violence at the crucial moment. In our times we have seen this happen in Italy, Germany, and Spain, where the capitalists resorted to fascism to stop the working class movement toward socialism.

Consequently Lenin considered it utopian to hope for “disarma­ment” so long as capitalism con­tinues. In his opinion the work­ers can achieve a world socialist society only if they learn m ili-

MOLOTOV

tary science and prepare to de­fend themselves against the on­slaught of captalist reaction.A TRAP

Leinin therefore tried to edu­cate the workers to view the slo­gan of “disarmament” as a treacherous trap which the capi­talists themselves are interested in fostering.

To demand “disarmament” as defined here, said Lenin “is tantamount to the complete abandonment of the point of view of the class struggle, the renunciation of all thought of revolution.”

Lenin doesn’t sound at all like Molotov or the editors of the Daily Worker, does he?

But Molotov does not use the term “disarmament” in this wide sense of opposition to militarism in general. In the words of Len­in, it is “disarmament” as “used by Kautsky and the Kautskyists . . . in the sense of reduction of armaments” that Molotov proposes.i Kautsky, as every student of

the socialist movement knows, was the leading theoretician of the Second International who betrayed the cause of socialism during the First World War and opposed the Bolshevik revolu- tion. All the leading Bolsheviks attacked Kautsky as a vile and cowardly traitor. Yet Molotov advocates the Kautsky kind of "disarmament.”

Lenin contemptuously dismiss­ed Kautsky’s slogan of “disar- manent” in passing. W ith the exception of his observation on the sentimentality of the Kaut­skyists, Lenin’s caustic comment applies word for word to Molo­tov’s present proposal before the United Nations:OPPORTUNISM

“The Kautskyist advocacy of ‘disarmament,’ which is address­ed to the present governments of the imperialist Great Powers, is the most vulgar opportunism, it is bourgeois pacificism, which actually—in spite of the ‘good intentions’ of the sentimental Kautskyists— serves to distract the workers from the revolution­ary struggle; for this advocacy imbues the workers with the idea that the present bourgeois governments of the imperialist Powers are not bound by thou­sands of threads to finance cap­ital and by scores of hundreds of corresponding secret treaties (!•«., predatory. plundering treaties, preparing the way for imperialist war), between each other.”

Lenin’s own words thus show what a gulf lies between Lenin­ism and the bourgeois pacifist proposal of Molofco*

The municipal elections in six important Italian cities— Rome, Turin, Genoa, Florence, Naples and Palermo— gave results that follow closely the pattern of the French elec­tions. In Italy successes of the Communist Party (Stalinists) and the Socialist Party were

PAGE FOUR T H E M I L I T A N T SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1946

the MILITANTPublished In the interests oi th i

Worl&ng PeopleVol. X — No. 47 Saturday, November 28, 1946

Published Weekly by THE M ILITAN T PUBLISHING ASS’N

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"Capitalism w ill not disappear form the scene automatically. Only the working class can seize the forces o f production from the stranglehold of the exploiters. History places this task squarely before us."

— Leon Trotsky

“National Menace”Daniel J. Tobin, Czar-President of the AFL

Teamsters, is again basking in the warm praise of bankers, industrialists, Southern and Northern congressmen and the Big Business vulture-press. His achievement is five lines of type, suitably set off in extra-black ink, in the November issue of his personal organ, The International Teamster. They read:

“ Strikes have become a national menace. They are an invitation to inflation and de­pression. They must be curtailed or the na­tion w ill sink into chaos and organized labor w ill perish.”

Strikes are indeed a menace—to the swollen profits of the corporations, to the plans of Wall Street to wreck the unions, to the man­ufacturers’ scheme to cut wage costs, fire ■workers and increase profits by speeding up the workers under the slogan of “ more pro­duction!”

But a closer study of the article containing Tobin’s plagiarism from the editorial columns of the Wall Street Journal—an article en­titled “Wildcat Strikes Must Be Stopped”— shows that Tobin considers strikes more par­ticularly a “ national menace” to Tobin.

I t appears that “some members of this or­ganization believe that strike benefits are automatic”—a notion that Tobin is trying to correct. And the main theme of the article is that while the Teamsters international treasury contains the tidy sum of $16,000,000, i t isn’t going to be expended for any strikes that are “ unauthorized” by Tobin.

Even though that $16,000,000 comes from the hard-earned wages of the truckdrlvers, Tobin looks on it as his personal property. He takes some $60,000 a year—and up—in salary and expenses from this pile. He’s voted him­self a union-paid annual trip to Europe and other foreign parts. This treasury enabled him to build several profitable private enter­prises, including an insurance racket.

A strike like the recent New York general drivers walkout, which was prolonged for a couple of months, constitutes a considerable drain on Tobin’s “ capital.” I t ’s true that the New York drivers, by defying Tobin’s attempts to cripple their strike and settle on the bosses’ terms, won a shorter work week and a 31- cent an hour raise. But look what a strike like that can do to Tobin’s treasury!

That’s a real “ national menace.”

Alabama DemocracyDown in Alabama on election day about two

and a half per cent of the population voted for an amendment to the state constitution that requires any citizen who wants to vote to be able to “ read, understand and explain” any provision of the U. S. Constitution to the satisfaction of the county registrars.

Approximately 80,000 white property own­ers put this over against a surprising opposi­tion vote of about 70,000. The measure is frankly aimed at imposing an air-tight ban on the right to vote of a million Alabama Negroes, a third of the state’s population.

Just imagine some race-hating white Dem­ocrat asking a would-be Negro voter to ex­plain to the county registrar’s satisfaction the meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which reads:

“The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on ac­count of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Can’t you see hundreds of thousands of Ne­gro citizens denied the right to vote because they “ incorrectly explain” that the 15th Amendment is supposed to give them the right to vote regardless of their color. They just wouldn’t understand plain English as it is spoken by the ruling Southern industrialists and land-owners.

Gov. Chauncey Sparks, who holds his of­fice by virtue of the fact that less than nine per cent of the population—white and Negro —can cast a ballot, opined that the new law is a mighty good thing because it would “ pre­vent a flood of Negro registration.”

The Governor said he believes in giving the Negro “ a measure of satisfaction in the seg­regation that gives him an opportunity to de­velop independently.” But 'he’s dead set against the Negro developing any political independence.

A new day is dawning in the South. The

big minority who voted against the amend­ment is a clue to why Sparks was so anxious to get the amendment through. The Demo­cratic white ruling class fears nothing so much as a democratic expression of the peo­ple—for then the millions of oppressed white and Negro toilers of Alabama and other South­ern states would band together to blast from their high seats the degenerate rich whites who rule the South.

Crisis In C.P..The American Communist (Stalinist) Party

continues to be convulsed by an internal crisis. T)ie leadership seems unable to restore its prestige and authority. The rank and file is simmering with discontent over party policy.

The cause of this crisis Is not difficult to uncover. During the war the Stalinist rank and file were forced to act as strikebreakers and jingoes. The Browder leadership advocat­ed the no-strike pledge, the wage freeze, and openly supported the Wall Street war profit­eers.

This line, of course, originated in Moscow. Browder’s dissolution of the Communist Party was strictly in accordance with Stalin’s dis­solution of the Communist International.

With the close of the war, the Stalinist lead­ership tried to appease the outraged feelings of the rank and file by expelling Browder. They tried to make a scapegoat out of Browd­er and unload all their political crimes on him. They promised a turn to the “ left.”

Many rank and file Stalinists greeted this development with relief, hoping that the cam­paign to stamp out “ Browderism” meant a return to the revolutionary socialist politics of Lenin.

But they have been bitterly disappointed.The Foster-Dennis regime has proved that

It is no more “ leftist” than was Browder’s regime. Foster and Dennis have not been quite as brazen as Browder in hailing Wall Street. However, like Browder, they too have practis­ed “ coalition” or more properly defined, class- collaborationist, politics.

In the November election they campaigned for the red-baiting candidates of the reac­tionary Democratic Party machine. In sup­porting Wall Street banker Lehman, for ins­tance, the Daily Worker was distinguished from the N. Y. Times only by its more sickening en­thusiasm.

Foster and Dennis are answering the mounting discontent of the rank and file in the usual Stalinist manner — with bureau­cratic expulsions. These brutal expulsions should serve to teach the workers In the Com­munist Party what the Trotskyists have main­tained for many long years that the Stalinist bureaucracy cannot be reformed.

Workers who want a Marxist party w ill not •find it in the American Communist Party. We invite the discontented workers in the Com­munist Party to examine the program and writings of Leon Trotsky and the publications of the Socialist Workers Party. The Trotsky­ists are the only ones who represent genuine Leninism in America.

Colonial DespotsOne of the revolting aspects of imperialism

is its hypocrisy.The Dutch capitalists Invade Java with fire

and sword. But their purpose, so they claim, is to assure the Indonesian people continua­tion of the “ benefits” of western civilization.

Similarly the French capitalists shoot down the Annamese people with the best of all pos­sible Intentions — to assure Indo-Chlna the blessings of rule from Paris.

The British have long boasted of their re­markable magnanimity in extending their em­pire clear around the world solely to “ en­lighten” colonials. This high moral objective is carried out with such strictly educational methods as dungeons, concentration camps, torture and the periodic bombing of defense­less villages.

But i t has been reserved to Wall Street to achieve the signal honor of pre-eminence in hypocrisy in carrying out its imperialist ambitions. Smug, self-righteous Wall Street propagandists disclaim any responsibility for the tyranny, terror and bloodshed inflicted on the colonial peoples by the European Imper­ialists. Wall Street’s alms, they assert, are the purest yet seen on this capitalist earth.

The generous Intent to bestow America’s great benefits on the backward regions more than makes up for any misapprehensions aroused because of the ruthless manner in which these benefits are shoved down the throats of the lucky “ wards”—so reads the copy turned out by Wall Street’s experts.

In the past week alone, however, two Items in the press show what Wall Street’s subject peoples think about dollar despotism.

On November 8, some 6,000 students of the University of Puerto Rico In San Juan staged a one-day protest strike against Truman’s veto of a bill to restore Spanish as the of­ficial language in the schools. These students protested one of the most characteristic dic­tatorial impositions of foreign rule—a decree compelling all children to speak the language of the conqueror In the class room.

The second item is the report of 100 F ili­pinos maltreated at the United States Olon- gapo Naval Station in Bataan province. These men and women revealed from personal ex­perience what U. S. despotism is like. Head- shavings, slappings, and beatings were com­mon, they said. Many had been hoisted from the floor by their tied hands. These tortures were inflicted as part of the “ questioning” on such charges as “ vagrancy’ and “ loitering.”

On November 7 the Philippine Liberty News declared that the Marine security detail at the base was “ as bad” as the Japanese con­querors.

These facts once again confirm what The M ilitant has consistently maintained since it was founded: That Wall Street’s imperialism is no better than that of any other capitalist power. Wall Street imperialism is brutal, cruel and vicious—an ugly tyranny reeking with hypocrisy.

" Election returns never bother ME — / always find that it pays to contribute to BOTH parties.'*

GOD’S ANGRY MAN, byLeonard Ehrlich. ModernAge Books, 1938, 357 pp., 50cents.“God’s Angry Man” was the

great John Brown, flaming with determination to set the Negro people free. Ehrlich draws a vivid portrait of the revolution­ary warrior, as he tells a story more exciting than any adven­ture tale.

In 1856, when the story opens, slavers and northern settlers were struggling to decide whether Kansas would enter the Union as free or slave state. A mob of slavers burned down the free- soil town of Lawrence. John Brown, with a handful of follow­ers, organized a counter-attack in Potawatamie.

Firmly believing that God had appointed him to shatter the bonds of the slaves, Brown fought a desperate losing battle against the slavers and the federal troops which poured in to quell his tiny band. Owen Brown, his eldest son, was wounded and captured. John Brown Jr., wounded and fleeing for safety, was arrested and driven mad by beatings. Frederick Brown was shot down in cold blood by a slaver-minis­ter.

But the. heroic struggle made John Brown a legend and symbol of the fight against slavery. “There’ll be no peace in Kansas, none at all in our country,” he said, “until the slave sin Is wiped out! And it’ll be wiped out In blood.”

He formed a new plan — to go deep into the South, and rouse the slaves to rebellion.

Wherever abolitionists met. Brown begged for funds. Among

his friends were Frederick Doug­lass, great Negro revolutionist: Harriet Tubman, who had led thousands of slaves to freedom along the underground: Thoreau, Parker and Higginson.

Anxious to leave nothing to chance. Brown hired Fordes, a British adventurer, to write a drill-book for the little guerrilla band which would make the first foray. Fordes betrayed him, and Brown plunged ahead before his plan was complete.

With 21 men — sixteen white men and five Negroes — he seized the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, on Oct. 16, 1859. All were certain that their deed

would be a signal for slave-revolts everywhere. But their “reserves,” the thousands of rebelling slaves, never came. Alone, they fought Lee’s federal troops. Sixteen of the band, including Brown’s sons Oliver and Watson, were slain. Only five survived to face trial.

Brown was the first to be tried. The prosecutor read a preamble Brown had written for a new constitution:

“Wherefore, slavery, through­out its existence . . . is none other than a most barbarous.

unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens up­on another . . . therefore we citizens, and the opressed peo­ple, do . . . establish the follow­ing provisional constitution.”

Found guilty of “treason, con­spiring with slaves to rebel, and murder in the first degree.” Brown proudly replied: “Had 1 interfered in the manner which I admit . . . in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great. . . or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have . . . Every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward . . .

“I did no wrong, but right. Now if it Is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life . . . and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done”

On Dec. 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged.

Brown, tragically wrong in be­lieving he could summon up an insurrection by his own bold stroke, was right in declaring that “reasonable” talk would not end slavery. Just 26 months later, Harper's Ferry was under fire in the Civil War.

Slavers and reformers alike sneered at his “fanaticism." But his ideas lived and inspired thou­sands. Workers who read Ehr­lich’s book today will be equally inspired in their own struggle against capitalism, for Brown was a revolutionist devoted to freeing all the oppressed.

— Ruth Benson

Our Program:1. Defend labor's standard o f liv in g !

A sliding scale of wages— an escalator wage clause in all union contracts to provide automatic wage increases to meet the rising cost of living!

Organize mass consumers committees for independent action against profiteer­ing and price-gouging!

Expropriate the food trusts! Operate them under workers’ control!

2. Full employment' and job security fo r a ll workers and veterans IFor the 6-hour day, 30-hour week! A sliding scale of hours— reduce the hours of

work with no reduction in pay to prevent layoffs and unemployment! Government operation of all idle plants under workers’ control! Unemployment insurance equal to trade union wages for workers and veterans

during the entire period of unemployment!

3. A g a in s t a ll an ti- labo r laws and governm ent s trikebreak ing !No restrictions on the right to strike and picket!No injunctions! No compulsory arbitration!

4. Build an independent labor pa rty !

5. Tax the rich , no t the poor!Repeal the payroll tax! No sales taxes!No taxes on incomes under $5,000 a year!

6. A n 18 b illio n do lla r appropria tion fo r governm ent low -rent housing!

7. Full equa lity fo r Negroes and nationa l m ino rities !End Jim-Crow! End Anti-Semitism!

8. F o ra ve terans 'o rgan iza tion sponsored by the trade unions!

9. A w ork ing class answer to cap ita lis t m ilita rism and war.Take the war-making powers away from Congress! Let the people vote on the

question of war or peace!Against capitalist conscription!Abolish the officer caste system!Full democratic rights in the armed forces!Trade union wages for the armed forces!M ilitary training of workers, financed by the government, but under control

of the trade unions!10. S o lidarity w ith the revolu tionary struggles o f the workers in a ll lands!

For the complete independence of the colonial peoples!Withdraw all American troops from foreign soil!

11. For a W orkers ' and Farmers' G overnm ent!

NAM Gives Picture Of U. S. In Next War

The top circles of the American ruling class are discussing quite frankly among themselves just what course they will follow at home in their projected war against the Soviet Union. Part of this discus­sion was made public by the November issue of The International Teamster which cites from a recent bulletin issued by the National Association of Manu­facturers.

The M ilitant has warned time and again that Wall Street’s war plans against the Soviet UnioD entail enslavement for the American workers. This is borne out to the hilt by the NAM bulletin which speaks of the institution of slave labor in the U. S. as a foregone conclusion. Here is how this is put:

“I f war with Russia should come, the concensus among Washington officials is that national service . . . will have to be imposed immediately.”

In order to impose “national service”—read: con­script labor—the plan is to “conscript” industry as well. Or as the NAM bulletin phrases it:

“This in turn would necessitate the conscription of all the productive and transportation resources of the nation . . . I t would be politically impossible, these government leaders agree, to force labor to work in plants that are operated on a profit basis.”

In other words, the plan calls for the same meth­ods and demagogy as employed by Hitlerite Germany.

To round off the picture, the NAM stresses that the war against the USSR will by far surpass the duration and costs of World War I I :

“Few military leaders believe Russia could be de­feated by atomic bombs alone. They believe invasion and occupation would be necessary, at a terrific ex­penditure of lives and material. One top official es­timated that the cost of a war with Russia would increase the national debt by 500 billion to 1,000 billion dollars.”

The only problem that bothers the NAM is how such a monstrous burden could be successfully un­loaded on the already overstrained mass of the people.

Bilbo Combines Graft With Race-Hatred

Foul-mouthed race-hating Senator Theodore C. Bilbo of Mississippi, who was re-elected through fraud and violence, is facing sensational charges of re­ceiving war profiteering graft amounting to some $100,000.

Bilbo was elected to office by a privileged few, less than five per cent of the voting age population of the poll-tax state. He openly called in the last Democratic primaries for lynch terror against Ne­groes attempting to register and vote. How well he got paid for his services to the rich Southern inter­ests he represents is now spilling out.

Charges against Bilbo include the following:His acceptance of $25,000 from the Newton-Glenn

Construction Company, who were given the contract to build Keesler Aviation Field, Biloxi, Miss.

His acceptance of $5,000 from B. L. Knost of the Knost and Morrissey contracting firm, who were also awarded valuable war contracts. His acceptance from Morrissey of a Cadillac automobile.

His acceptance of a “dream house built by New­ton and Knost in the center of an eight-acre artifi­cial lake.

His acceptance of $4,500 for various appoint­ments to the Naval Academy and West Point.

His acceptance of fees amounting to $3,000 in connection with attempting to quash income tax fraud indictments and other cases.

The gift of a total of $8,750 from a war con­tractor for contracts to construct an air field. Ac­ceptance of $1,200 apiece from two other war con­tractors.

The setting up of a $25,000 fund for a church, out of which he purchased property for himself, while war contractors claimed deduction for these contributions.

Bilbo’s anti-Negro, anti-Jewish and anti-labor activities fit in well with his role as a war grafter.

Buried Report Told U. S.-Nazi Business Ties

Because he made public some of the contents of his suppressed report on American fascist activities. Assistant Attorney-General O. J. Rogge was sum­marily fired on Oct. 25 by Attorney-General Clark, under prders from President Truman.

Rogge was fired two days after he told a Swarth- more college audience that the report, which Rogge himself had drawn up, indicated that the Depart­ment of Justice planned to drop its prosecution of 26 American fascists and contained details of grow­ing fascist activities in the United States.

In his report, Rogge himself declared “that cer­tain Supreme Court decisions handed down in 1944 and 1945 had brought me to the unpleasant conclu­sion that the Supreme Court would reverse any ver­dict which the Government obtained . . . and there­fore, the government should nolle prosequi (not pros­ecute) the case.”

Even more embarrassing to the capitalist govern­ment Is the section of the report confirming, from Nazi sources, the dealings of America’s leading cor­porations with the Nazis. The Administration is anx­ious to keep these facts buried particularly because its policy Is to seek the rehabilitation of Oerman capitalism as an ally of Wall Street In a war against the Soviet Union.

After his dismissal, Rogge told a meeting in New York that he had questioned a Berlin attorney, formerly in the service of H itler’s Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, who said that he had come to this country in 1940 to strengthen connections between American and German capitalist interests.

The German envoy told Rogge: “My most im­portant connection with American business was with the International Telephone & Telegraph Co., whose president, Col. Sosthenes Behn, was also & director of Standard Elektrieitats Gesellschaft, which was affi­liated with IT & T .”

Rogge’s informant was also a representative of the Underwood-Elliott-Fisher Co., Eastman Kodak and the International Milk Co., all with Interests in Germany. Among others visited by the German en­voy were American representatives of the Texas Com­pany, Faber Company, General Motors and Ford Motor Company.

Early In the war, Department of Justice prose­cutions — since dropped — revealed some of the business dealings with Nazi cartels of Standard Oil, General Electric and scores of other giant Amer­ican corporations that made profits from both sides of the battle-lines during the war.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1946 T H E M I L I T A N T PAGE FIVE

The Workers' Forum columns are open to the opinions o] the readers of “The Militant" , Letters are welcome on any subject of interest to the workers. Keep them short and include your name and address. Indicate if you do not v>ant your name printed.

Toledo Housewives' Chairman Thanks 'M ilitant' For SupportEditor:

As chairman of the House­wives Emergency Committee, I wish to thank The M ilitant for the fine cooperation and support given to the HEC when it went into action here in Toledo.

We will keep you informed of future actions of our committee.

Mrs. Alice Patton Chairman,

Housewives Emergency Comm.Toledo, O.

Workers G et Less As Prices SoarEditor:

I saw some figures in the Nov. 9 issue of Business Week that show what’s happened to the wages we’re getting. And if any­thing. this Wall Street maga­zine exaggerates our pay.

Workers in all manufacturing industries were averaging 6 per cent LESS per week in August 1946 than March of 1945. The hardest hit were the workers in “durable goods” — shipbuilding, down 16 per cent; machinery, down 15 per cent; steel mills, down 12 per cent: durable goods as a whole, down 10 per cent.

Workers in light industry are doing better— on paper—because according to the figures they’re getting seven per cent more than they were in March 1945. But it only looks good. Those are the workers who were not work­ing such long hours on war jobs, and so the cut in overtime didn’t affect them "as much.

For instance, cotton manufac­turing goods workers are get­ting 25 per cent more than they were in March, 1945—but NOW, with that 25 per cent raise, they only get $34.81 per week. All they really got was a dollar a day more. And today prices have gone up so high that nobody can

’support a family on $34.81 a week even if he can pull rabbits out of a magician’s hat for sup­per.

B. M.Queens, N. Y.

Acquit Cop Who Blinded NegroEditor:

The New York papers report that a South Carolina jury —

. white, of course — acquitted Lynwood L. Shull, the cop who blinded Isaac Woodard by goug­ing his eyes out with a police stick. All Shull was charged with was a “violation of civil rights,” but even that was too much for a Jim Crow jury.

The attorney who defended Shull even said that South Caro­lina should secede from the un­ion again if Shull were found guilty! In other words, he’ll fight to the death for the right of cops to beat up Negroes whenever they please.

The case again shows how the courts back up the Negro-haters, the Ku Klux Klan, the Colum­bians, Inc. outfit, and all the rest of that rotten crew.

R . J .New York. N. Y.

DisarmamentEditor:

I was glad to see somebody tell the truth about disarma­ment. Joseph Hansen’s article in the Nov. 9 M ilitant was very good. As an example of the fak- ery in the “disarmament” talk at the UN, I saw a newspaper report Nov. 8 from London that said “Britain is leading a six- nation race for uranium in the Antarctic,” In other words, for atom bombs!

J. C.Brooklyn, N. Y.

Doesn't Like UsEditor:

Please discontinue sending me Tho Militant. I simply cannot go along with most of your views. You do too much cursing, cri­ticizing and condemning every­body. I suppose you would like to see a society run exclusively by Jews and Negroes, and all others, who know something dif­ferent, could go to hell.

Your expressions certainly do not appeal to people with the average intelligence.

Robert Malle New Hyde Pk., N. Y.

SWP Election Campaign H it A t Real IssuesEditor:

I heard one of your street meetings, read your platform and listened to a couple of the broadcasts in your New York campaign. While I do not agree with ../e.ything you say, I want to congratulate you on the way you put on your campaign.

The Socialist Workers Party speakers hit at the real issues; housing, prices, discrimination. They didn’t waste their time mud-slinging like other politic- ! -s do at election time. I t was the cleanest and most forthright campaign I ’ve ever seen any party put on, and I wish you success in the future.

Cw R.New York, N. Y.

More Hoarding By ProfiteersEditor:

Here’s just one more example of why we haven’t been able to buy soap or vegetable shorten­ings. The manufacturers blamed the shortage of fats—but I ’ve already seen more soap in the stores since the price ceilings went off. And I read that Proc­ter & Gamble are raising their prices as much as 70 per cent at one smack. I ’m willing to bet that’ll fill the grocery stores with Ivory soap and Crisco!

Housewife Indianapolis, Ind.

Likes Our ProgramEditor:

I have written to the secre­tary of the Communist Party not to slander your party. You may have differences of opinion on small subjects but I feel if your are really fighting for the working class sincerely you should be more friendly to each other.

I like your paper very much. I he- Socialist Workers Party speakers; one election meeting w held in the factory district where I work. I ’d like to join your party but first I want to make sure if you are really in earnest.

I think you have a perfect program. I distributed it to a lot of my friends. One thing I don’t believe in though is the Communist idea of overthrowing our government and the capital­ist system.

We must have rich people, but I do believe in job security, sick benefits and unions.. We don’t want Stalin here. I want to earn my dollars, but I want enough of them to buy a steak, eggs, butter and milk for my c ,dren, and be comfortable. We shouldn’t have to do without orange juice for the children who need it. That’s not a lux­ury but a necessity.

S. K.New York, N. Y.

BUFFALOM ilitant Forum Europe, 2 Years A fte r V-E Day

Saturday, Nov. 30 Followed by Social

629 Main S't, 8:30Admission Free

Objects to Review O f "The Jungle"Euitor:

The- review of Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, by Ruth Benson, il­lustrates, it seems to me, the in­herent weakness in the SWP to fairly appraise any literature tb t doesn’t bear the Pioneer Publishers’ imprimature. With the limited quantity of litera- f i available through your pub­lication it seems rather stupid to malign writers who have something to give to a class­conscious w - king class.

Mr. Sinclair, having devoted all his mature years to the for­warding of a socialist society in / nerica, is snidely referred to by Miss Benson, who would do veil in her whole lifetime to ac­complish a fraction- of the good Sinclair has done in one month of his, as a “tired intellectual.” She reverts to the petty bour­geois premise that the union “skates”’ of the packing industry have actually helped the work­ers along the road to socialism.

A Philistine in the ranks of the capitalist press is taken as another feature of the decay of the system, but to have it hit you in the eye from the pages of a so-called revolutionary or­gan does much to discredit the integrity of the organization which prints it!

Norman Johnstone Westville, N. J.

A Handy W ay to Help The M ili ta n t

PioneerNotes

Milwaukee PAC Candidate Is Target Of Red-Baiters

P icket L in e Stops Scabs

New York Bazaar To Aid ACEW R

The New York Committee of the American Committee for European Workers Relief announces a bazaar to be held Dec. 7 at Irving Plaza. To make certain that this bazaar is successful in its aim of rais­ing funds for relief purposes, an appeal is made for dona­tions of all things which can be sold at a bazaar: costume jewelry, household utensils, curios, knitted articles, elec­trical equipment, b o o k s , prints, etc.

Send your contributions to American Committee for Eu­ropean Workers Relief, 197 Second Ave., N. Y. 3, N. Y.

A friend who has been making a monthly donation to Pioneer Publishers wrote recently as follows:

“At this time I am moved to congratulate you on the work you are doing. While I am not as convinced as some of you that it is the solution to all the world’s ills, I feel that you are letting a much needed ray of light into the murky mess of American politics.

“I look forward with some tre­pidation to the future and can only hope that you Will keep your in' -grity as you grow. At any rate I believe the experiment is to be .encouraged. My form of encouragement enclosed.” (He sent a check for $5.)

* * *In the New York «lection cam­

paign of the Socialist Workers Party, 929 Pioneer pamphlets were sold at street meetings, along with much other literature. The pamphlets featured were A Practical Program to Kill Jim Crow, Veterans & Labor and Build a Labor Party Now (each 10c).

• * *

In four months since its pub- I .'.tion, the entire 5,000 copies

of Veterans & Labor which wereр. ?d have been distributed and sold, except for small quan­tities in the hands of a few SWP ' anches.

Only two monuhs since Build a Labor Party Now was printed, more than 6,000 copies have been mid.

* *

Pioneer literature has gone to 36 countries, on every continent, > the last two years. In the same period 77 American book­stores, including the very largest, have handled Pioneer works, es­pecially those by Leon Trotsky. Also 86 libraries, universities and other institutions have added Pioneer books and pamphlets to their circulation or reference de­partments, from a few 10c pam­phlets to fairly large selectionsс. Trotskyist works.

« * *

Send for price list to Pioneer Publisher, 116 University Place, New York 3, N. Y.

tickets could not inspire the workers’ support.

Two former Socialist Party leaders were defeated in the Democratic column. Daniel Hoan and Andrew Biemiller, candi­dates for Governor and 4th Dis­trict Congressman respectively, found that their patriotic war fervor and the now broken magic spell of Roosevelt were not suf­ficient to guarahtee a lifetime vote from the workers. Both candidates lost heavily in in­dustrial Milwaukee County.

Another ex-associate of these "Socialist” Democrats, John Brophy, former Socialist aider- man and presently a “Socialist” Republican, was elected to Con­gress in Milwaukee’s 5th District as a result of maneuvers by the capitalist strategists to defeat Edmund Bobrowicz, PAC candi­date on the Ecmocratic ticket.

Most significant result of an otherwise normal election was the heavy vote polled for Bob­rowicz in Milwaukee's predom­inantly Polish Catholic indust­ry 5th District despite the fierc­est red - baiting campaign ever conducted here. Bobrowicz polled 43,344 votes to the 48,134 elect­ing John Brophy, the “ex-So- cialist Republican.”

The Democratic incumbent, Tnad Wasieleski, who was de- fc ted by Bobrowicz in the Dem­ocratic primary, ran as an inde­pendent with the full backing of the regular Democratic ma­chine in the final election. He polled 36.7CD votes to make pos­sible tt.j victory of the more re- lirble John Brophy, Republican,

Edmund Bobrowicz, business "sent for the CIO International Fur and Leather Workers and "sneak” candidate on the Dem­ocratic ticket of the Stalinist- dominated PAC in Milwaukee County, was repudiated by the entire Democratic Party ma­chine from the Democratic Na­tional Committee down to the

San Pedro Open House Brings In ‘Militant' Subs

At the West Allis, Wis. plant of the Allis Chalmers Co., the picket line stands firm in spite of police brutality and intimi­dation. Here one strikebreaker is down and a woman held back as an attempt to break the picket line failed. The com­pany has rejected arbitration offers by Local 248, CIO United Auto Workers. Federated Pictures

: vile former Socialists on the machine ticket. He was given a thoroughgoing daily smear in the capitalist press here, liberal and rc „.ionary alike.

To this attack the Stalinists added confusion by meekly com­plaining that all the other Dem­ocrats had deserted the Party and Roosevelt’s phrases. They then supported all the other Democrats!

The Socialist Workers Party in Milwaukee condemned the red - baiting campaign against the PAC-supported candidate in the following statement:

“The smear offensive against the CIO-PAC candidate for Con­gress, Bobrowicz, by the boss press is not surprising, since the employers are accustomed to la­bor support for labor’s enemies, as in the case of AFL-CIO sup­port for Truman and Wasie­leski. The bitter events will prove the futility of ‘capturing’ the millionaires’ parties for the w'vkers. Real defense and labor unity, and democratic workers’ selection of candidates, is only possible in a union-made Inde­pendent Labor Party.”

Youth ActivitiesLOS ANGELES. — Socialist

Youth Club meets every Tues­day, 8 p.m., at SWP headquart­ers, 316>/2 W. Pico Blvd. Educa­tiona l after every meeting. Re­freshments served.

NEW YORK. — For informa­tion on the Trotskyist Youth Group seno name and address to 116 University Place, N. Y. 3, N Y.

Open Forum: Every Friday, 8 p.m., at 116 University Place. Dancing, refreshments.

Sundays, 3 p.m.:—"What Is So­cialism?” 116 University Pi.

PHILADELPHIA.—For infor­mation call ST. 4-5820, from noon to 6 p.m.

AKRONC urrent Events

Discussion EVERY SATURDAY Followed By Social

Socialist Workers Party 8 So. Howard 8 p.m.

H a v e Y ou —

An Extra Toaster? Costume Jewelry?

Radio?Or Anything

That Can Be Used It 's Needed For

EUROPEAN RELIEF BAZAAR

to be held Dec. 7 in N . Y.

Entire proceeds to American Committee fo r European Workers Relief. Send or

bring articles to :

ACEW R197 Second Ave.

New Y ork 3, N. Y. or ca ll

ORchard 4-5629

Yetta Fine of San Pedro reports that sub-getting is easy at socials of the Socialist Workers Party. “The enclosed 11 subs were sold at an Open House we held in our headquarters Friday night,” she writes. "The NAACP held an elec­tion rally at which our candi­dates were invited to speak. Fol­lowing the meeting we invited workers from the audience to come to our Open House. I t was very successful. The 11 subs are some of the results.”

♦ * *"Here is another idea on get­

ting subscriptions,” writes E. Brent of Detroit. “When cover­ing a meeting with The M ilitant be sure you are there at least 45 minutes before the meeting starts.

“One comrade can pass out The M ilitant and another can sell pamphlets. The one who is selling pamphlets starts talking to some of the workers who are standing around and explains the party program. You not only get subs but you get reports as to how well The M ilitant is doing.

“Comrade K. Murry covered a meeting last Sunday afternoon and while he was distributing the paper a member of the Socialist Youth League came running out of the building, handed Comrade Murry a subscription from the paper already filled out, and asked him to make sure that he gets The Militant.”

* * *James White of New Haven

sent in nine subs that were ob­tained by the Connecticut com­rades during the week.

* • *Belle Rosen sent us six subs

secured by the Chicago comrades. * * *

Beatrice Trent of Los Angelesforwarded 10 subscriptions and states that measures have been taken to correct “the fact that Los Angeles has not been send­ing in reports of its work in the literature field. In order to be sure that the work of our section is reported in the future, we have assigned a comrade, Lou Thompson, to send weeklyreports to New York.”

* * *John Leavitt of Baltimore re­

quests that we send two copies of The M ilitant every week to the ILGWU. “They will display these in their reading room for the use of their members and I believe that two copies will go the rounds sufficiently.”

* * *

Another order for back Issues of The M ilitant comes from Joy Connors of Chicago: “There has been a terrific demand here for the two copies of The M ilitant with the articles by Joseph Han­sen on The Great Conspiracy,and If you have any extra copies please send us 10 of each. One of the comrades is making note­books of these articles and pass­ing them around his plant to counteract the Stalinists who are trying to do a job there with The Great Conspiracy.”

been reading The M ilitantthoroughly each week and now is taking the paper to school and having discussions with on» of his teachers. I have suggested that he get his teacher to sub­scribe. I am now waiting devel­opments.”

a a a

The DeFilippo Brothers of E l­mira, N. Y. renewed their sub­scription to The M ilitant andasked that we send a sample copy of. the paper to a friend.

* * *

Sidney Miller, a student in Berea, Ky. sent in a sub for himself and also a subscription for the library of Triplett High School in Berea.

* * *

Again we hear from Sam Tay­lor of Madison, Wis. who is doing his share to boost the circulation of The Militant. He sends three more subscriptions, stating: “I haven’t given my friends a money-back guarantee on the paper because I know they’ll be more than satisfied. Here’s hoping The M ilitant hits 100,- 000 'Circulation, and bigger things from J--rc!”

Veterans & LaborBy Charles Carsten

A new popular pamphlet present­ing the Socialist Workers Party'» Program of Action tor Veteran».

24 page* 10 cent«

PIONEER PUBLISHERS116 University Place

New York 3, N. Y.

G e t y o u r co p y o f o u r la te s t p a m p h le t

O N LY 10 Cents!

SEND STAMPS OR COIN TO

PIONEER PUBLISHERS116 University Place, New York 3, N . Y.

Come and m eet o th e r ‘ M ilita n t9 R eaders A t these Local A c tiv ities o f

The Socialist Workers PartyAKRON — Visit The SWP, 2nd

floor, 8 So. Howard St., Akron 8, O. Open daily except Sunday, 2 to 4 p.m,

Saturdays: Current Events Discussion, 8 p.m. followed by social. Admission free.

BALTIMORE—For information write Box 415, Baltimore 3, Md. Monthly forums.

BAYONNE—SWP headquarters. 62 W 23rd St. Open house 2nd and 4th Saturdays.

BOSTON—Office at 30 Stuart St. Open Saturdays from noon until 5 p.m.; Wednesdays and Fridays. 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Sunday Forum- -3 p.m.BUFFALO — Open every after­

noon except Sunday. Militant Forum, 629 Main St., 2nd floor. Phond MAdison 3960.

Open house and current events discussion every Satur­day, 8:30 p.m. Admission free.

CHICAGO - Visit SWP 777 W Adams i corner Halsted). Open 11 am . to, 5 p.m. daily, ex­cept Sunday. Tel. Dearborn 4767. Library, bookstore.

Sat. night, open house.CLEVELAND - Militant Forum

every Sunday, 8:30 p.m. at Peck’s Hall ̂ 1446 E 82nd St off Wade Park Ave.).

CONNECTICUT — Write to the Militant, P.O. Box 841, New Haven.

DETROIT — Open house every Saturday, 8 p.m. at 6108 Lin- wood. Office open daily 12 to 5. Phone Tyler 7-6267.

Sunday forums, 3 p.m.FLINT—Visit SWP and Militant

headquarters, 215 E. Ninth St.. Flint 3, Mich.

Open Monday through Fri­day, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

LOS ANGELES—Visit Militant

Publishing Assn., 316!/2 W. Pico Blvd. Open daily, 12 noon to 5 p.m. Phone Richmond 4644.

Every Friday, 8 p.m.—M ili­tant Workers Forum, 466 E. Vernon.

SAN PEDRO, M ilitant Publish­ing Assn., 1008 S. Pacific, Room 214.

MILWAUKEE - Visit the M il­waukee SWP branch, 424 E Weils St., evenings from 7:30.

MINNEAPOLIS— Visit the Labor Book Store, 10 South 4th St. open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

Sunday Forums, 3:30 p.m.NEWARK—Visit SWP headquar­

ters, 423 Springfield Ave. Phone Bigelow 3-2574. Library and reading room open week nights, 7-10 p.m.

Friday night forum, 8:30.NEW YORK—CITY HQ., 116

University Place, OR 5-8149 Tues., 9 p.m. and Sat., 4:30, re­hearsal of M ilitant chorus.

HARLEM: 103 W 110 St. Rm. 23. MO. 2-1866.

Every Thursday Open Dis­cussion, 8 p.m.

BRONX: 1034 Prospect Ave 1st floor, phone T I 2-0 l6 l.

Reading room open Mon. to Fri., 7 to 10 p.m.

Current events discussion. Fridays at 8.

BROOKLYN: 635 Fulton St. Phone ST. 3-7433.

Mon. Class — “Program of SWP," 7 p.m.

CHELSEA: 130 W. 23 St. phone CH 2-9434.

OAKLAND, Cal.—Meetings Wed­nesday, Odd Fellows Temple. 410 - 11th St For information write to P.O. Box 1351.

PHILADELPHIA - SWP Head­quarters. 1303-05 W Girard Ave., 2nd floor. Open daily Friday forum, 8 p.m. Phone

Stevenson 5820.PITTSBURGH—SWP headquar­

ters 1418 Fifth Ave., 2nd floor. Round table discussions, 2nd and 4th Sundays each month, 3:30. Phone: Court 6060.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Visit th# SWP headquarters, 134 S. W . Washington, 3rd Floor. Tel ATwater 3992. Open 1 to 4 p.m., daily except Sunday, and 6 to 8, Tuesday, Friday.

Wed. night class on Social­ism and current events, 8 p.m.

SAN DIEGO—Headquarters 623 Sixth Ave., open 3-9 p.m. daily.

SAN FRANCISCO — visit the San Francisco School of Social Science, 305 Grant Ave., cor­ner of Grant and Sutter, 4th floor: open from 12 noon to 4:30 p.m., daily except Sun­day. Phone EXbrook 1926.

SEATTLE— Visit our Headquar­ters, 1919 V2 Second Ave. Open Monday through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m. Tel. SE-0543. Library, Bookstore.

Friday forum—8 p.m.ST. LOUIS— Visit our Headquar­

ters. 1023 N Grand Blvd., Rm. 312, open Monday. Wednesday, Friday. 7:30 to 9 p.m Forums e'ery Thursday, 8:30 p.m. Phone Jefferson 3642.

ST. PA UL— 540 Cedar St., St. Paul 2, Phone Garfield 1137. Open daily 2:30-9:30.

TACOMA, Wash. - Meetings every Wednesday, 8 p.m., at Oddfellows Hall, 6th and Faw­cett. Discussions on current topics. For information, write P.O. Box 1079.

TOLEDO—SWP headquarters at 108 Summit St. Toledo 4, O. Open daily. Phone MAin 8919.

YOUNGSTOWN — Militant La­bor Forum, 35 V2 S, W att S t , Youngstown 3, O.

Sixteen subscriptions were sent in by Pauline Ryder for the Philadelphia Branch.

* + ♦

L. Lynn of Minneapolis sentus two 1-year combination sub-

* * *Paul Carroll sent in two subs

for Toledo and asks that wo send him some M ilitant sub­scription cards.

* * *

R. Murdock, a M ilitant boost­er in New York City, told us tho following: “I sold a sub to ono of the workers In my shop some­time ago. Recently our discus­sions have taken a new turn. She is talking about her 14-year old son. Apparently he has

By Jack O'Connell(Special to The M ilita n t)

M IL W A U K E E , Nov. 10 — D efeat o f a ll PAC-endorsed candidates In Wisconsin and in M ilw aukee County, a tra - dltonal “progressive, liberal, and socialist’’ center of the nation, affirmed the Socialist Workers Party position that la­bor cannot sneak in and take over the political machines of the bosses, the Democratic and Republican Parties.

R .— its also demonstrated that the office-seeking, party-jump­ing gymnastics of the Norman Thomas Socialists and the Stal­inists on both the boss party

D ia ry O f A St eel W orker

Memories On A November DayBy Theodore Kovalesky

Wind and rain, teardrops streaming from broken clouds . . .

The November wind wails past the stacks and through the webs of thp high-teRsion wires. T h e cold November rains fill the red-brown gutters of the steel towns, wash the gray walls of the tene­ments, spatter on the farmhouse roofs, and sink into a man’s body with a shuddering chill.

When you sit in the warmth of the union hall and hear the cry of the November wind outside, perhaps you think of the sad November days when labor martyrs died for the cause of freedom.

I t was November in 1915 when Joe Hill, the singer of our songs and fighter for our cause, stood with his back against a Utah prison wall waiting for the slugs that were to tear the life from fits body. "Don’t mourn for me,” he said. "Organize!” I t was a bleak November sky that looked down a moment later upon Joe’s blood seeping into the prison yard.

And then there was Wesley Everest, waist- deep in the cold Chehalis River facing the mob who hated him for his revolutionary beliefs. It was a bleak November night that covered the respectable business men who dragged Everest away to torture him and then lynch him.

I t was in November when other respectable people gathered together the smashed and rotten remains of a nameless “doughboy” and placed them, garishly bestrewn with medals, in the Na­tional cemetery at Arlington, where, with cyn­ical, lying ceremony, they glorified the capitalist war of J. P. Morgan and Co. And still it lies

there, that once mud-rotted, rain-washed, tom. broken body . . . a monument to the brutal greed of the capitalists.

I t sometimes seems that the bleak winds of November as they wail about the open hearth stacks and §ing through the wires are lament­ing the fate of the people.

But if the winds and the skies could speak they would tell us that it was not the month of November for which they sorrowed.

For November will always be remembered— not for defeats, but for victory. I t was during one November almost three decades ago that the workers struck back, and behind the fury of their blow were all the centuries of the misery of the poor. I t was November in 1917 that saw the Russian workers, tormented and angered beyond all endurance, rise up, cast off the cap­italist yoke, and found the first workers’ state.

• • •November brings to the furnace men the icy

menace of winter, the first indication of the freezing winds that will sweep across the fur­nace floors bringing with them discomfort and disease, of the thickening snow plugging the furnace yard and the streets of the steel town. November announces the coming of winter, which means not relief to the sweating furnace men, but additional hardship.

Up on the furnaces, we know all this. We know what the winter means, and we hate it. But we don’t have much to say about it: we know spring will get around sooner or later . . . because it always has. It's a precedent.

And the great Russian Revolution is a pre­cedent too. Things will get bad. Then they’ll get worse. But one day, the people take a hand in the matter. And then, no matter what month it is, the socialist springtime of mankind will come with a bang!

PAGE SIX NEW YORK, N. Y. SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 23. 1946

The Negro S truggle

Free Elections Here And A broadBy William E. Bohannon

from the Democratic primary which was won by their Senatorial colleague, Bilbo?

I f Vandenberg really believes in free elec­tions, why doesn’t he try to do something about the undemocratic election laws in the state of Michigan which make it extremely difficult for a working class party to oppose him on the ballot?

And what has either of these two "defenders of democracy” got to say about the conspiracy of the Democratic Party, abetted by the Repub­lican Party, which barred three minority parties, including the Socialist Workers Party, from the ballot in New York after they had scrupulously complied with all the difficult requirements?

Like charity, the fight for democratic rights must begin at home. Otherwise, demands for democratic rights abroad are nothing but hypo­crisy. The only people really interested in fight­ing for democratic rights in other countries are those who fight for them right here at home. All that Byrnes and Vandenberg want in those countries is the establishment of governments that will be friendly to Wall Street; when they are set up, you will never hear another peep out of them about free elections, etc.

Only the successful struggle of labor in this country, leading eventually to the estab­lishment here of a government free of Wall Street domination, can help to secure and guar­antee democratic rights elsewhere.

The Mental Scrap-HeapBy Grace Carlson

time as many psychiatrists as we now have.We need five times the number of psychiatric

nurses that are now available. More than half of the hospital beds in this country are occupied by mental patients, but there are only 32 centers for specialized training in psychiatric nursing.

We need more mental hygiene clinics. Serious mental breakdowns can often be avoided if prompt clinical treatment is given to the early case of nervous disease. But 25 states do not have even one mental hygiene clinic!

We need more scientific research into the causes and treatment of mental disorders. But less than 20 per cent of the public institutions for the treatment of the mentally-ill carry on any kind of a research program.

The money cost of World War I I was $335,-000,000,000!

In the words of Dr. Henry Brosin, professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago:

"One of the greatest lessons of the war Is the disturbing contrast between the pin money we spent for constructive human pursuits and the huge money cost of destruction. The total money spent for ail medical research in 1944 would pay for only eight hours and twenty minutes of this last war.”

Should Truman Pack His Bags?By Joseph Hansen

Free Press Threatened By Paper MonopolistsWalker Polls Sizable Vote In Ohio

TO LEDO , Nov. 13 — The workers of Ohio voted w ith th e ir feet in the general elections last week. A m il­lion fewer votes were cast In the state than in the election two years ago in spite of the last minute frantic efforts of the la­bor leaders to get out the vote for the Democratic Party ticket.

On the day before the election. Richard Gosser, Lucas County Director of PAC, issued a call in the name of PAC for the workers to vote a straight Democratic ticket. This call did not have the desired effect as the Republicans won every office in the area.

Thousands of workers who had been reached by the campaign of the Socialist Workers Party cast their ballots in the Social Labor column and other thousands voted by sticker for Malcolm Walker the SWP candidate for Governor.

Although no official count was given for the write-in candidate of the SWP, it is possible to tell from the veiled releases of the election boards and from other sources, that Walker polled a sizable vote in spite of the handi­caps imposed on his campaign.

Walker toured the state in the course of the campaign, covering more than 30 industrial cities, mining and farming communi­ties. presenting the program and platform of the SWP to thous­ands of new workers. On Oct. 25 at Rutland, Ohio, striking miners in Meigs County enthus­iastically received Walker’s speech and backed up his fight­ing program.LARGE PROTEST

The size of the protest vote •both for Walker and for the So­cial Labor ticket is unprecedent­ed in recent years in Ohio.

The Socialist Labor Party, run­ning under the name of Social Labor, polled over 950 votes in Lucas County alone, although they haven’t even a skeleton of an organization in the county.

Scores of workers have report­ed to representatives of the SWP and The M ilitant that they voted in the Social Labor column under the impression that they were voting for the Trotskyist candi­dates.

New Fascist Gangsters Labor Papers Face Suspension As Big Publishers Grab Supply

NEW YORK—Monopoly control of newsprint paper by the few giant publishers threatens to Wipe out the en­tire small and labor press within a few weeks or months, leaving the American public with no source of news ex­cept the mouthpieces of Wall Street.

This throttling of the la­bor press, such as helped fas-

Four leading members of the new fascist organization un­covered last month in Atlanta, Ga., named Columbians, Inc., who boast they are “40 times as bad as the Ku Klux Klan.” Openly launching a pogrom against Negroes who are moving into white restricted areas, they also hurled threats of violence against Jews. They claim branches in other cities, including New York.

Left to right, Jack Price, James Akins, Homer Loomis, Jr. (secretary of the outfit) and R. L. Whitman, were arrested and released on bail. Federated Pictures

Voters In Washington Boot Out Democrats

SEATTLE—The State of Washington, for several years a stronghold for the so-called progressive brand of Demo­crats, went Republican on Nov. 5 by a landslide vote. The turnout at the polls was oneof the largest for a non- presidential election—an esti­mated total of 700,000.

This indicated that the work­ers had not abstained in great numbers as they had in 1942 and 1944 and even in the primaries last July. I t is evident that a considerable number of workers shifted their vote to the Repub­licans.

That shift, like the greater shift in the middle-class vote, was not a vote of confidence in the GOP, but a protest vote.

This fact was clearly recogniz­ed by the mouthpieces of the capitalist class including Hearst’s Post Intelligencer, which was pleased by the results but had to admit: “I t is far from a resur­gence of popular confidence in the victorious Republican Par­ty.”

Swept out by the Republican landslide were Congressmen Hugh B. Mitchell; Hugh De Lacy

San Francisco SWP Outlines Correct Way To Fight Fascism

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10—The Socialist Workers Par­ty here is distributing to CIO workers copies of its Nov. 1 letter to the San Francisco CIO Council Executive Board. This letter, which has not

The world hasn’t got enough troubles it seems. On top of worrying about the atomic bomb and a few ounces of germ poison that can wipe out

the population of Canada and the United States, now we’ve got to decide whether it would be a good thing if Truman resigned.

Apparently th e Democrats started this one too. I t wasn’t enough to give us a meat famine and the worst housing shortage in history. I t wasn’t enough to double and triple prices. They

had to raise the question about Truman quitting.Senator Fulbright of Arkansas says Truman

should appoint a leading Republican as- Secre­tary of State and then toss in the towel. That would make a Republican the President. Ful­bright is a Democrat. He is one of the young W all Street political salesmen who flashes a high I.Q., served time in England as a Rhodes scholar and can give a complicated answer to any question raised in Washington.

The Chicago Sun, which has been spreading the light of Democratic Party propaganda since it first appeared on the horizon of Chicago po­litics five years ago, likewise has asked Truman to pack his trunks.

My personal advice is to forget this headache. What difference would it make if he resigned?

Besides there are a lot of practical obstacles.The New York Times, which speaks with all

the weight of Wall Street behind its editorial pen, is against any such “coup d’etat.” The Times is sure that,"in the long run Senator Ful­bright will be glad that his plan was not taken seriously, either in the White House or in res­

ponsible quarters elsewhere.”Allah has spoken, how could prophet Truman

disobey that voice?And that’s not all. None of the Republicans

seem at all anxious about Truman resigning. Not a single one like Dewey, Bricker, Warren, Taft or Vandenberg has bitten on the Demo­cratic bait about moving into the White House for the next two years. They prefer to wait un­til 1948.

All of them seem to be sure there’s going to be a depression cracking right sudden and they don’t want to get caught short in the White House. Why go down in history as another Her­bert Hoover? Why not let a punching bag like Truman take the r-ap?

There’s still another practical matter to con­sider in Truman’s resigning. I t ’s not every year that a lowly wheelhorse in the Pendergast ma­chine hits the political jackpot the way Truman did. Wouldn’t old Tom Pendergast rise up out of his grave if Truman turned $75,000 a year and $25.000 traveling expenses over to a wheel- horse in the Republican machine? That’s pork!

Moreover, the housing shortage right now is tough—as you can find., out by asking any vet­eran wandering around in a residential area. I t ’s- going to be tough the next two years too. In fact it ’s going to get worse. Meanwhile, why give up a good thing? The White House is mighty comfortable, especially with that swim­ming pool inherited from FDR.

On the face of it, the talk about Truman re­signing Isn’t going to come to much. After all,

man has proved he can jump just as fast, and just as hign and just as far as any Repub­lican when Big Business cracks the whip. So what’s the point of resigning?

been answered, called for united front action against fascism, and protested against divisive tactics used by CIO Council representative Ed Young, in conjunction with the Oct. 27 demonstration against Gerald L. K. Smith.

During the preparations for this picket line, Young conscious­ly discriminated against the SWP, the letter points out. “At a meeting of interested organ- i; ons called by Brother Young on Saturday, Oct. 26, the repre­sentatives of the Socialist Work­ers Party were ordered to leave. Another political organization, the American Youth for Demo­cracy (associated with the Com­munist Party), was permitted to stay.”

Young claimed that the de­monstration was being run under the exclusive direction of the CIO, and “stated that he was given specific orders by Council Secretary Paul Schnur to ex­clude the SWP from this con­ference.”

Furthermore, as a pretext for barring the SWP, Ed Young “falsely charged that the basis for excluding the Socialist Work­ers Party was its record in the picket line against Smith the previous year. He made the charge that the SWP had tried to split and disrupt the picket line by marching on Franklin Street separately from all other groups. This accusation is com­pletely false.

"We marched with the main

body of picketers on Hayes St. and aided in every way to main­tain and build the unity of the picket line. All charges of dis­ruption are a simple attempt to discredit our record against fas­cism.”

Despite the tactics of Young, the Socialist Workers Party did participate in the Oct. 27 picket line against Smith, as it has on previous occasions.U N ITY NEEDED

“While we protest this specific case,” the letter continued, "we also wish to point out the cry­ing need to establish a more per­manent organization to meet the threats of the fascists. Smith is on the political scene to stay. His recent meetings are ail in preparation to build a National Fascist Party which will play a spearhead role in the coming anti-union drives.”

The statement concluded by citing the danger of dividing the workers in their struggle. “To lim it the fight against fascism to just a few organizations — to invite some and exclude others — sets a dangerous precedent. In Germany, when the Commun­ists and Socialists fought each other, Hitler walked into power and smashed both of them. La­bor in this country must not re­peat this mistake.

“We urge the CIO Council to take the lead in organizing a United Front organization to fight fascism, and that this or­ganization include all those who are willing to carry cn the fight against fascism.”

—a follower of the Stalinist line; and Coffee — all prominent “Rooseveltian Democrats,” who campaigned on the basis of "go­ing back to the Roosevelt pro-; gram.”SAME STORY

In the elections for the state assembly the same story was re­peated. Numerous Stalinist Dem­ocrats, previously elected and reelected from working class dis­tricts were thrown out of office. Only a handful of Democratic machine politicians in county jobs retained their seats.

Tile Stalinist office holders in the Democratic Party—particu­larly Congressman Hugh De Lacy—were singled out for vici- otis red-baiting attacks, against which they defended themselves very lamely. De Lacy’s answer to the red-baiters took the form of draping himself in the Amer­ican flag.ABET RED-BAITING

By refusing to campaign for a labor party and expose the weak­nesses and futility of the Demo­cratic Party, De Lacy and the Stalinists only succeeded in at­taching to themselves the stig­ma of the already discredited Democratic Party.

The success of the red-baiting campaign is attested by the fact that throughout his district De Lacy polled a much smaller number of votes than his non- Stalinist running mate for Sen­ate, Hugh B. Mitchell. De Lacy received half of the vote cast for him in 1944.

As can be seen, the cowardly and treacherous policy of the Stalinists helped the Wall Street agents to divert the wrath of the lower middle class and sec­tions of the workers against the "reds.”

At tlUs writing the vote for the minority parties on the ballot has hot yet been tabulated. No reports have been issued on the statewide vote for the Socialist Workers Party. A full analysis of the minority vote cast will have to wait for a subsequent is­sue of The Militant.

The only reports received gave the SWP candidate for U. S. Senator, Charles R. Swett, 103 votes in Tacoma. The only can­didate of the Socialist Party polled nearly 200 votes out of a total of more than 14,000 in the 37th State Senatorial District. A Communist Party candidate for state office received 117 votes out of 28,000.

DETROITSunday Forum

'A nalys is O f The Elections’

Speaker: Jack Gaynor Nov. 24, 3 p.m.

6108 Linwood

cism come to power in Eur­ope is being accomplished with the full co-operation of the Democratic administration which last Jan. 1 set aside the quota system, at the demand of the big publishers.

The monopoly press is buying up paper mills right and left, or contracting for the entire out­put of the mills of this country and Canada. The source of pa­per for the labor press is being rapidly reduced to a trickle through the black market, at prohibitive prices.THREAT AIRED

This immediate threat to free­dom of the press was aired by more than 5d small paper pub­lishers and printers from New York, New Jersey and Pennsyl­vania, meeting here Nov. 11 with Dr. Milton Stewart, investigator for the Senate Small Business Committee.

A committee was set up, rep­resenting labor, fraternal, for­eign language, co-operative, com­munity and special papers and the printers of such publications, to map a program of action.

Dr. Stewart raised a score of inconsequential side issues, but failed to divert the group for long from its one real beef, the paper monopoly.

“A long-range legislative pro­gram may do some good after we’re dead,” replied one pub­lic’ er, "but if some of us don’t get paper within a couple of weeks, we’re done.”

Half of the papers represented were said to be in the same fix as one printer of labor papers who reported that the mill which has supplied his paper for 11 years can supply him no more after Jan. 1.MANY SUGGESTIONS

Immediate pressing of an anti­trust suit against the paper monopoly was one of many sug­gestions. Many agreed there was no hope whatever from the Civilian Production Administra­tion, before which a group of labor editors appeared last April.

Others b e l i e v e d sufficient pressure on Congressmen and Senators might bring prompt restoration of the quota system which Big Business killed al­most a year ago. Some fan­tastic publicity schemes were proposed to trick the monopoly press into exposing itself in its own columns.

More p r a c t i cal suggestions were made for the. labor press to protest loudly while it still has paper to print anything.

Labor Candidate Polls Good Vote In Cleveland

CLEVELAND, Nov. 13 — Matthew De More, independ­ent labor candidate for Con­gress in the 22nd District, received a substantial 8,855 votes in last week’s election. The De More campaign was snowed under by the Republican protest vote which swept the country and was especially strong in Ohio. Even the city of Cleveland, a Democratic stronghold, was pushed into the Republican camp

In the 22nd Congressional Dis­trict race, Frances P. Bolton, in­cumbent Republican, received 170,193 votes and the Democratio candidate Earl Heffley got 67,- 477 votes. Although the De More campaign was deluged by the re­cord straight-ticket voting, there is already evidence of election fraud. A representative of the De More Campaign Committee has filed a protest with the Se­cretary of State to investgiate the failure to count and record De More votes in a number of precincts.

The boss-controlled radio and daily papers deliberately drew an iron-curtain boycott against any mention of the De More campaign. This conspiracy and the election frauds give addition­al evidence to the fact that the Cleveland industrialists were gravely concerned over any movement stimulating independ­ent labor political action.

The Cleveland industrialists were not the only ones that fear­ed this De More campaign. Both the AFL and CIO could not open­ly oppose the De More campaign so they warily sidestepped the issue by not endorsing any candi­date in the 22nd Congressional District race. The Stalinists who dominate the CIO played an es­pecially treacherous role in sabo­taging the De More campaign while giving lip-service support.

In the closing weeks of the election, the Stalinists launched an insidious character-assassina­tion campaign against De More in CIO meetings.

The militant unionists of the Collinwood Area Council who initiated and ran the De More campaign feel that the De More vote was a good one, considering their political inexperience and the Stalinist sabotage.

The 32nd Ward and City of Euclid De More Clubs, the best organizers of the campaign, are maintaining their clubs perman­ently for future labor political campaigns.

Bay Area SWP Describes Gains In Election Campaign

By Toni PriceSAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 6 — The first election cam­

paign ever conducted by the Socialist Workers Party in the Bay area has been concluded with a fine record of achievement. Thousands of workers were introduced toTrotskyist ideas for the firs t tim e by the w rite -in cam ­paign for Steve Roberts, SWP candidate for Governor, and Robert Chester, SWP candidate for Assembly, 20th District.

Especially important was the reaching of maritime workers during the strikes here. The SWP went on the air in support of the strikers’ demands. Thousands of copies of the California elec­tion edition of Th.? Militant were distributed on the waterfront picket lines.

Tht anti-Smith demonstration in the Bay City was tied in with the campaign for Roberts and Chester. SWP leaflets were dis­tributed calling for support of the anti-fascist picket line at Commerce High on Oct. 27, and SWP broadcasts also presented the party’s record In the struggle against fascism.

Election rallies attracted hun­

dreds of workers who listened attentively to Robert Chester’s presentation of the Socialist Workers Party program. He spoke also at meetings of the Piledriv- ers Union, Machinists Local 1304 and the Oakland chapter of the American Veterans Committees His call for the building of a la­bor party invariably met with en­thusiastic response.

Four Monday night broadcasts were delivtred over station KSAN, reaching tens of thousands of listeners. A total of over 13,000 pieces of election literature was distributed here, by mail, on the picket lines, at all major union meetings, and in workers’ neigh­borhoods. An indication of the welcome this literature received, can be seen in the fact that 1,000 copies of The M ilitant elec­tion edition were taken at a single meeting of Local 6 of the Warehouse Union.

The write-in vote for the SWP candidates has not yet been re­ported as this is written.

Every couple of days you can read on the front pages of the press how the U.S. government Is sending complaints about the denial of free

elections in Rumania and Bul­garia and other countries not under the domination of Wash­ington.

But how about the situation a little closer to home? And I don’t mean the situation in India or China or South Africa or Greece or other places where the U.S. government Is strangely silent about the right of free election.

I mean right here in the land of the brave and the home of the free.

Why haven’t Byrnes and Vandenberg com­plained about Alabama which has just adopted the Boswell amendment reviving the old device for disfranchising Negroes by .requiring regis­trants not merely to read and write but also to “understand and explain” the Constitution “to the satisfaction” of the lily-white Board of Re­gistrars?

Why don’t Byrnes and Vandenberg have anything to say about Georgia where the "white primary” is being revived in the Democratic Party, a one-party dictatorship in Georgia?

Why don’t Byrnes and Vandenberg get in­dignant about Mississippi where an open reign of terror was conducted in order to bar Negroes

Out of every 22 living persons in the United States, one will spend part of his life in a mental hospital. Recent studies show that nervous and

mental disease takes a larger toll than do cancer, infantile paral­ysis and tuberculosis combined. The problem of mental illness is the most serious medical prob­lem in the United States today.

But mental illness can be pre­vented. And sick minds can be made well again if they are given prompt, scientific medical care. Millions of people could be res­

cued from the mental scrap-heap if society were willing to spend the necessary money to save them.

We need more—and better—public institu­tions for the care of the mentally-ill. Some state institutions spend as little as 40 cents a day per patient, whereas many private Institutions spend more than eight dollars a day per patient.

We need more psychiatrists in these public Institutions. A doctor who has the care of 1,000 mental patients is simply unable to give any kind of modern individualized treatment. Au­thorities estimate that we need at least four